Argentine court to hear Myanmar Rohingya genocide case

FINANCIAL TIMES
John Reed, south-east Asia correspondent
28TH NOVEMBER 2021

Matter brought under universal jurisdiction allowing grave crimes to be tried anywhere

Rohingya refugees protest before the UNHCR office in Jakarta this month against the Myanmar military’s crackdown © BAGUS INDAHONO/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Argentina’s judiciary has agreed to open a genocide case brought by Rohingya victims of atrocities committed by Myanmar’s military, in a move hailed by victims and their advocates as a historic step toward bringing the country’s ruling generals to justice.

 The case was brought in Buenos Aires by a UK-based Rohingya group and six female survivors of the military’s 2017 crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where security forces killed thousands, committed rapes and drove about 750,000 members of the long-persecuted minority into Bangladesh.

Indonesia pledges to send strong message to Myanmar for Rohingya repatriation

BSS News
17 Nov 2021

Dhaka, Nov 17, 2021 (BSS) - Indonesia today vowed to offer strong message to Myanmar to repatriate its Rohingya nationals.

"We are going to send a strong message to Myanmar for resolving the Rohingya  crisis," visiting Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said while paying a call on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) here.

Addressing root causes of Rohingya crisis critical, BD envoy tells UN

Dhaka Tribune

UNB
November 10th, 2021

File photo: Ambassador Rabab Fatima of Bangladesh Permanent Mission at the UN speaks at the UN headquarters UNB

The open debate discusses possible role of Security Council in addressing inequalities, exclusion and conflict

Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations Ambassador Rabab Fatima has said the social and political exclusion of Rohingya minorities in Myanmar has blown into a crisis with serious humanitarian and security ramifications for the region.

172 arrested in Bangladesh since killing of Rohingya leader

La Prensa Latina Media

Online News Editor

November 2, 2021

Dhaka, Nov 2 (EFE)- A total 172 people have been arrested in Bangladesh in a month since the killing of Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights (ARSPH) chairman Mohibullah in his office, the authorities reported Tuesday.

The arrests have been made at the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar in the southeast of the country, Namiul Haque, the commander of the armed police battalion posted in the camp, told EFE.

Two Rohingyas die after falling into septic tank

Dhaka Tribune
Abdul Aziz, Cox’s Bazar
October 31st, 2021

Rohingya sewerage DhakaTribune

The bodies were recovered after an hour of frantic effort

Two Rohingya workers died after falling into a septic tank at Balukhali Camp 8 in Ukhia of Cox's Bazar on Sunday afternoon.

The deceased were identified as Saddam, son of Nazir Hossain of East Camp 8 and Nurul Amin, a resident of Camp H, Block 10.

Superintendent of Police and Commander of the 8th Armored Police Battalion (APBn) Mohammad Shihab Kaiser confirmed the matter.

Commissioner Lenarčič in Bangladesh: EU provides €12 million for displaced Rohingyas in Bangladesh and Myanmar

The European Sting
by European Union
October 28, 2021

UNHCR/Roger Arnold

Thousands of new Rohingya refugee arrivals cross the border near Anzuman Para village, Palong Khali, Bangladesh.

This article is brought to you in association with the European Commission.

Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič is concluding today a three-day visit to Bangladesh to see the situation on the ground in the context of the worsening humanitarian crisis affecting Rohingya people. In the margins of his visit, he announced an additional €12 million in humanitarian aid funding for the Rohingya in Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Asean summit starts with Myanmar junta excluded for ignoring peace deal

the Guardian
Reuters
Tue 26 Oct 2021

In a rare show of anger from neighbouring nations, Min Aung Hlaing has been shut out of the regional sitdown

Leaders gathered on Tuesday for the virtual Asean meeting hosted by Brunei, but from which Myanmar was excluderd. Photograph: Reuters

A summit of south-east Asian leaders has begun without a representative from Myanmar after its junta leader was excluded for failure to follow a regional peace deal and the ruling military refused to send junior representation.

Neither Brunei, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) chair, nor the bloc’s secretary-general made a mention of the no-show in opening remarks at the virtual meeting.

ASEAN must reaffirm commitment for rights of Rohingya refugees -- Syed Hamid Albar

BERNAMA

28/10/2021

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 28 -- The 38th and 39th ASEAN Summits that will be wrapped up today is a watershed moment for ASEAN to re-affirm its commitment to human rights, particularly the rights of the Rohingya who were forced to flee Myanmar, said Chairman of the Malaysian Advisory Group on Myanmar and former foreign minister Tan Sri Dr Syed Hamid Albar.

Syed Hamid said that while he appreciates ASEAN's necessary – or bold as said by some – decision to exclude Myanmar's Senior General Min Aung Hlaing from the summit, “the summit must recognise that (the) Rohingya will remain displaced for years to come and begin coordinating contingency planning.

Six-murder in Rohingya camp: 4 more arrested in Ukhiya

Dhaka Tribune

Abdul Aziz, Cox’s Bazar
October 26th, 2021

Solar lamps are lit in the evening at the Balukhali Rohingya camp in Cox's Bazar on November 16, 2018 Reuters

A total of 14 people have been arrested so far

Police have arrested four more suspects over the attack on a madrasa inside a Rohingya camp that left six people dead in Cox’s Bazar’s Ukhiya.

Members of the Armed Police Battalion (APBn) and Ukhiya police arrested Shafiullah, a “head majhi” (community cluster leader) of camp 10, during a joint operation on Monday, said Ukhiya Police Inspector Gazi Salauddin.

Why Is the World Ignoring Repatriation of Rohingya Refugees?

THE I DIPLOMAT

By Asif Muztaba Hassan
October 25, 2021

Refugee camps in Bangladesh have become a source of business for vested interests.

The Rohingya refugee crisis, which entered its fifth year in August, is showing no signs of winding down. Repatriation of refugees is nowhere in sight, even as management of the large number of refugees that Bangladesh is hosting is getting increasingly complex for its government.

On September 29, Mohibullah, an influential Rohingya community leader, was assassinated by unidentified men near his office in Lambasia in the Kutupalong camp, just a few hundred feet away from two police stations.

Ukhiya မွာ ၿပိဳင္ဘက္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ အုပ္စုေတြၾကား ေသနတ္ ပစ္ခတ္မႈမွာ ၇ ဦး ေသဆုံး

UKIYA.COM
Published:22-10-2021,

Zawgyi

ေကာ့ဘဇားရွိ စခန္းတစ္ခုတြင္ ၿပိဳင္ဘက္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာဒုကၡသည္အဖြဲ႕ႏွစ္ဖြဲ႕ၾကား ခိုက္ရန္ျဖစ္ပြားမႈေၾကာင့္အနည္း ဆုံး လူခုနစ္ဦး ေသဆုံးခဲ့သည္။

 

ေသာၾကာေန႔ နံနက္ ၄ နာရီ ၁၅ မိနစ္ခန႔္က Ukhiya ဒုကၡသည္စခန္းတြင္ ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့ေသာ ေသနတ္ပစ္ခတ္မႈ တြင္ အျခားလူအမ်ားအျပား ဒဏ္ရာရခဲ့ေၾကာင္း လက္နက္ကိုင္ ရဲတပ္ရင္း ၈ မွ ရဲမႉး Shihab Kaiser Khan မွ ရဲမႉး Shihab Kaiser Khan က ေျပာၾကားခဲ့သည္။

ထို႔ေနာက္ ဒဏ္ရာရသူမ်ားကို စခန္းအနီးရွိ ေဆးခန္းသို႔ ပို႔ေဆာင္ခဲ့သည္။ ေသဆုံးသူမ်ားကို အာဏာပိုင္မ်ား က ေဖာ္ထုတ္နိုင္ျခင္း မရွိေသးေပ။

U.N deal offers no guarantees of free movement for Rohingya on island - leaked agreement

REUTER
Poppy Mcpherson and Ruma Paul
October 15, 2021

A view of sheds and concrete structures built for thousands of displaced Rohingya from Myanmar on Bhasan Char island in Bangladesh, December 29, 2020. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain/File Photo

Oct 15 (Reuters) - A deal for the United Nations to start work on a remote Bangladeshi island where the government has sent thousands of Rohingya refugees offers no guarantee they will be allowed to move freely to the mainland, according to a copy of the agreement.

The Bangladesh government has moved nearly 19,000 Rohingya refugees, members of a persecuted mostly Muslim minority from Myanmar, to Bhasan Char island from border camps, despite protests by refugees and opposition from rights groups, who have likened it to an island jail and said some relocations were involuntary.

UN's failure to put pressure on Myanmar cause delay in Rohingya repatriation: Experts

AA

Md. Kamruzzaman
DHAKA, Bangladesh
18.10.2021

The UN’s failure to pressure Myanmar to take back its Rohingya nationals while providing them with humanitarian assistance on the remote Bangladeshi island of Bhasan Char may delay their much-awaited repatriation process, according to experts.

Out of Rohingya into Bangladesh, out of frying pan into the fire

BIG NEWS NETWORK
Khalid Umar Malik
17th October 2021

DHAKA, Bangladesh - Bangladesh intends to transfer more than 80,000 Rohingya refugees to a distant island in the Bay of Bengal after making a deal with the United Nations to provide help, officials said Friday.

After Killing, Bangladesh Launches Crackdown in Rohingya Camps

THE I DIPLOMAT

By Sebastian Strangio
October 14, 2021

Bangladeshi police have made nearly 40 arrests, including five in connection with last month’s murder of a prominent Rohingya advocate.

Police in Bangladesh police have arrested nearly 40 refugees at the crowded refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar after the killing of a well-known Rohingya community leader last month. According to a report by Benarnews that cited local officials, the Bangladeshi police have undertaken a blitz against criminal activities in the camps, and arrested many suspected of involvement with illegal weapons and drugs.

“Police so far arrested 38 Rohingya from different refugee camps since the murder of Muhib Ullah,” Rafiqul Islam, an additional police superintendent in Cox’s Bazar, told BenarNews on Tuesday. “Law enforcers are continuing the drives to reduce any offenses or illegal activities in refugee camps.”

According to the officials, five of the suspects were arrested in connection with the recent killing of Mohib Ullah, the head of the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights (ARSPH), who was reportedly shot and killed by unidentified gunmen outside his office at the Kutupalong refugee camp on September 29.

Bangladesh promises that killers of prominent Rohingya activist will be brought to justice

Morning Star
Oct'13 2021

BANGLADESH promised “stern action” against those responsible for the assassination of a Rohingya Muslim leader who was shot dead in a refugee camp on Wednesday.

Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen vowed today to bring the killers of 46-year-old Mohib Ullah, who was gunned down in the Kutupalong camp in Cox’s Bazar, to justice.

As drugs and arms pour in, Rohingya camps see a rise in crimes

bdnews24.com
Golam Mortuja and Sankar Barua Rumi,
Published: 13 Oct 2021

As the sun sets on Bangladesh's south coast, a sense of foreboding fills the air as the dark underbelly of the Rohingya refugee settlements gradually comes to the fore.

 

 

Men with arms and weapons, that had hitherto been stowed away, begin to emerge from the shadows, while drugs are used in plain view.

The inhabitants are accustomed to such scenes and even a murder would do little to unsettle them.

The killing of Mohammad Mohib Ullah, a prominent community leader who campaigned for the Rohingya's safe repatriation, however, brought the issue of security and crimes in the camps into sharp focus both at home and abroad.

A group of unidentified gunmen killed him at Lombashiya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar's Ukhiya on Sept 28.

Bangladesh Cracks Down on Crime at Rohingya Camps, Nets Dozens of Suspects

Radio Free Asia - RFA

2021-10-12

Police launched the operation after the killing of refugee leader Muhib Ullah last month.

Bangladesh foreign secretary Masud Bin Momen (center) listens to a relative of slain Rohingya leader Muhib Ullah during a visit to the crime scene at the Kutupalong refugee camp in Ukhia, Cox's Bazar, Oct. 9, 2021.

Courtesy Armed Police Battalion, Cox's Bazar

Bangladesh police have arrested nearly 40 refugees, including many suspected of involvement with illegal weapons and drugs, since they launched a crackdown against criminality at Rohingya camps after community leader Muhib Ullah was slain last month, an official said Tuesday.

Among the dozens of Rohingya refugees taken into custody as part of the crackdown, five are suspected of being linked directly to the Sept. 29 killing of Ullah, a prominent Rohingya activist, at his office in the Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar district, according to the authorities.

UN, Bangladesh sign deal to aid Rohingya relocated to island

Aljazeera
11 Oct 2021

Authorities said another 81,000 refugees would be relocated to the remote Bhasan Char island over next three months. 

Rohingya refugees prepare to board a ship as they move to Bhasan Char island, near Chattogram, Bangladesh [File: Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters]

 

The United Nations and Bangladesh’s government have signed an agreement to work together to help Rohingya refugees on an island in the Bay of Bengal where thousands have been relocated from crammed camps near the Myanmar border.

More than 19,000 Rohingya have already been moved to Bhasan Char island by the government, and the UN said one of the key reasons to sign the agreement was to start serving that population. 

EU Parliament Voices Support for Myanmar’s Opposition Government

THE I DIPLOMAT

By Sebastian Strangio
October 11, 2021

Despite the motion, Western support for the National Unity Government is likely to remain informal and unofficial.

The European Parliament has voted to support Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government (NUG) and its parliamentary committee as the legitimate representatives of crisis-hit Myanmar.

In a resolution adopted late last week, the European Parliament expressed its “support for the people of Myanmar in their struggle for democracy, freedom, and human rights.” It said that it “supports the CRPH [Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw] and the NUG as the only legitimate representatives of the democratic wishes of the people of Myanmar” and called on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and other foreign governments “to include and involve them in genuine and inclusive political dialogue and efforts aimed at the peaceful resolution of the crisis.”

Myanmar has been in a state of severe crisis since the coup, which immediately prompted a nationwide movement of protests and work stoppages, which have been complemented in recent months by growing armed resistance.