Bangladesh is waging a campaign of arbitrary arrest, illegal expulsion, forced internment and starvation against Muslim refugees from Myanmar, a report released yesterday said.
Tens of thousands of unregistered Rohingya refugees, many of whom have lived in Bangladesh for decades, have been forced into makeshift camps where they are being left to starve to death, the report by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) says.
“It is unconscionable to leave this vulnerable population stateless and starving,” said Richard Sollom, PHR director of research and investigations.
“Haiti after the recent earthquake had an acute child malnutrition rate of 6 percent, in the Rohingya camps the rate is 18.2 percent — three times higher but with no aid,” he said.
Described by the UN as one of the most persecuted minorities on Earth, thousands of Rohingya from Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state stream across the border into Bangladesh every year.
Bangladesh recognizes 28,000 Rohingya as registered refugees, who live and receive aid at an official UN camp in Kutupalong. This figure is a fraction of the 200,000 to 300,000 unofficial refugees, government estimates say.
The report said the crackdown is an apparent attempt to dissuade any more refugees fleeing to Bangladesh ahead of elections in Myanmar later this year.
The police are “systematically rounding up, jailing or summarily expelling these unregistered refugees across the Burmese border in flagrant violation of the country’s human rights obligations,” the report said.
Up to 10,000 unregistered Rohingya, many of whom have lived in Bangladesh for years, have moved to the makeshift camps since January, local police say.
The crackdown has “quarantined” the unregistered refugees in the camps, which surround the official UN-run facility, and the report said they were effectively “an open air prison.”
“This confinement, coupled with the Bangladeshi government’s refusal to allow unregistered refugees access to food aid, presents an untenable situation: refugees are being left to die from starvation,” it said.
The PHR report follows two other reports, one by lobby group the Arakan Project and one by Medecins Sans Frontieres, which also criticized the crackdown.
The government on Sunday dismissed media reports relating to undocumented Myanmar nationals as “baseless and malicious.”
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