Bangladesh to send hundreds more Rohingya to remote island

Bangladesh is set to send hundreds more Rohingya Muslim refugees to a controversial facility at a remote island in the Bay of Bengal, weeks after it started their force removal from border with Myanmar.

The government will send around 1000 Rohingya refugees to the island of Bhasan Char in the Bay of Bengal this month, officials said on Sunday.

“They will be moved to Chittagong first and then to Bhasan Char, depending on the high tide,” one of the officials said.

According to Press TV, the Bangladeshi government constructed a network of shelters on the island to relocate up to 100,000 refugees currently living in cramped camps in Cox's Bazar, near the Myanmar border.

Earlier this month, it sent more than 1,600 refugees to the remote island despite calls from human rights groups, who called the relocation as “coercive.”

Deputy government official in charge of refugees Mohammed Shamsud Douza, claimed that the relocation was voluntary and that they were transferring only people who were willing to go. “They will not be sent against their will,” he said.

Aid workers, however, said officials used threats and enticements to pressure people into leaving Cox’s Bazar.

The refugees being relocated are among more than 730,000 Rohingya Muslims, who fled a state-sponsored crackdown in the Myanmar's Rakhine state.

Thousands of Rohingya Muslims were killed, injured, arbitrarily arrested, or abused by Myanmar soldiers and Buddhist mobs mainly between November 2016 and August 2017.

The Rohingya are widely seen as illegal immigrants in Myanmar and denied the right of citizenship. Bangladesh refuses to grant them citizenship, too.

ME