Almost 1 million Rohingya refugees stuck in Bangladesh yesterday marked three years since escaping from Myanmar, with the COVID-19 pandemic forcing them to hold a day-long “silent protest” inside their flimsy, leaky huts.
An August 2017 military operation — that has triggered genocide charges at the UN’s top court — drove 750,000 Rohingya out of Myanmar’s Rakhine State into neighboring Bangladesh, to join 200,000 who fled earlier.
Three years later and with no work or decent education for their children, there is little prospect of a return to the country, where members of the mostly Muslim minority have long been treated as inferior intruders.
Photo: AFP
Myanmar’s military “killed more than 10,000 of our people. They carried out mass murders and rapes and drove our people from their home”, said Mohib Ullah, a Rohingya leader in the camps.
For the second anniversary last year, Ullah led a rally of about 200,000 protesters at Kutupalong, the largest of the network of camps in southeast Bangladesh, where 600,000 people live in cramped and unsanitary conditions.
However, the Bangladeshi authorities, increasingly impatient with the Rohingya and who a year earlier cut Internet access in the camps, have banned gatherings because of the pandemic.
The sprawling camps have been cut off from the rest of Bangladesh, with the military erecting barbed-wire fences around the perimeters. Inside, movement has been restricted.
Fears the deadly virus could spread like wildfire — because physical distancing is almost impossible — have not been borne out, with just 84 infections confirmed and six deaths.
The Rohingya would mark “Genocide Remembrance Day” with silence and prayers in their rickety homes all day, Ullah said.
“There will be no rallies, no work, no prayers at mosques, no [non-governmental organization] or aid activities, no schools, no madrasas and no food distribution,” he added.
Bangladesh has signed an agreement with Myanmar to return the refugees, but the Rohingya refuse to go without guarantees for their safety and proper rights.
About 600,000 Rohingya remain in Myanmar, but most are not regarded as citizens, living in what Amnesty International has said are apartheid conditions.
The Rohingya are not convinced of the “sincerity of the Myanmar authorities,” Bangladeshi Foreign Secretary Masud bin Momen said.
Khin Maung, a 25-year-old Rohingya activist who lost 10 relatives in the horrors of 2017, said that the mood in the camps was very depressed.
“We want justice for the murders. We also want to go back home, but I don’t see any immediate hopes. It may take years,” said Maung, who leads a Rohingya youth group.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver