Death, abuse and torture: traffickers hold fleeing Rohingya to ransom for up to £3,000 a time

The Guardian
Kaamil Ahmed and Verena Hölzl in Cox's Bazar
Tue 5 Mar 2024 

People trapped in the world’s largest refugee camp hope to seek new lives elsewhere despite threats facing them as they attempt to leave Bangladesh 

An overloaded boat holding about 250 Rohingya refugees in Ulee Madon, Aceh province, Indonesia, 16 November 2023.   Photograph: Amanda Jufrian/AFP/Getty Images

Even as dehydration was getting to their passengers, the traffickers using boats to carry hundreds of Rohingya away from refugee camps in Bangladesh thrust phones into their hands and demanded they ask their relatives for money.

Rohingya Optimistic over International Prosecutor’s Trip to Bangladesh Refugee Camps

Benar News

Kamran Reza Chowdhury and Sunil Barua

Dhaka and Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh
2022-02-28

Rohingya walk along a dirt path inside the Ukhia camp in Cox’s Bazar, Feb. 15, 2022.
Sunil Barua/BenarNews

Rohingya leaders in Bangladesh expressed optimism on Monday about getting justice for alleged crimes against humanity committed in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, after the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor wrapped up his first visit to refugee camps.

Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan said The Hague-based ICC had authorized an investigation in November 2019, but the COVID-19 pandemic had slowed efforts to visit Bangladesh to gather evidence at Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar, a southeastern district along the border with Myanmar.

Bangladesh imposes lockdown on Rohingya camps

The Assam Tribune
1 May 2021

Dhaka, May 21: The crowded refugee camps that are home to hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims in Bangladesh have been placed under a lockdown after an alarming spread of the coronavirus, officials said on Friday. 

The shutdown will initially last for one week, until May 27, dpa news agency quoted Shah Rezwan Hayat, the head of Bangladesh's Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commission, as saying. 

5 Rohingya refugee camps under lockdown in Bangladesh after Covid-19 outbreak

LA PRENS LATINA MEDIA

Online News Editor
May 21, 2021

Dhaka, May 21 (EFE).- Bangladesh on Friday imposed lockdown in five of the 34 Rohingya camps in the southeastern district of Cox’s Bazar after detecting a sharp increase in coronavirus cases among the refugees living there.

“Some restrictions in Rohingya camps were already in place. Due to an increase in transmission, more restrictions were imposed in five camps until further instruction,” Bangladesh’s deputy commissioner for refugees, relief and repatriation, Mohammad Shamsuddoha, told EFE.