On Friday, December 4 more than 1600 Rohingya refugees, previously in hardscrabble camps outside Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, were moved by boat to the flood-prone island of Bhasan Char in the Bay of Bengal. For more than two years the government of Bangladesh has been building shelters for large numbers of ethnic Muslims on this remote, low-lying island. Since August of 2017, more than a million Rohingyas have fled violence and oppression in their home country of Myanmar, most of them crossing the nearby border into southern Bangladesh.
The Bangladesh government’s position is that they are “…not taking anyone to Bhashan Char forcibly.” But those compelled to resettle say something different. “My family didn’t want to go, they are taking them by force if my family go there to the island they will die because of floods,” a woman told Al Jazeera. This has been confirmed by aid workers who assert that the refugees are being threatened or bribed to move to Bhasan Char.
As this population transfer goes forward, humanitarian organizations explain that the island, in the track of frequent cyclones in the Bay of Bengal, is dangerously isolated and lacking resources for survival. The government of Bangladesh has not the UN to make safety assessments, nor has it allowed the press to observe the resettlement.
For updates and action items:
- Amnesty International: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/12/bangladesh-halt-relocation-of-rohingya-refugees-to-remote-island/
- Human Rights Watch: https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/12/03/bangladesh-halt-rohingya-relocations-remote-island#