Why Rohingya refugees stuck in Bangladesh?

BLiTZ

Meenakshi Ganguly and Brad Adams  
June 25, 2019

The Rohingya Muslims have faced persecution in Myanmar for decades. And yet no violence in their recent history has compared to that which the Myanmar military inflicted in August 2017. After militants from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army attacked police and army posts in northwestern Rakhine State on August 25, the military responded by killing thousands of Rohingya civilians, raping hundreds of Rohingya women and girls, and burning entire villages to the ground. In the course of a little more than three months, more than 700,000 Rohingya were forced to flee for their lives to Bangladesh. Myanmar authorities claimed they had conducted a “clearance operation” to rid the country of militants. In reality, they were fulfilling a long-standing dream of Myanmar’s Buddhist nationalists: the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims.

UN refugee chief meets with displaced people in Rakhine

MYANMAR TIMES 

Naw Betty Han  

22 May 2019

 Filippo Grandi arrives at Sittwe Airport on Monday. Photo - EPA

Filippo Grandi, chief of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, visited refugee camps in Buthidaung and Maungdaw townships on Tuesday to check on their conditions and assess their needs.

Grandi talked with refugees in Yan Aung Myay camp in Buthidaung and was scheduled to meet with state and district officials.

Refugees worry about shelters with onset of monsoon

MYANMAR TIMES

Nyan Lynn Aung 21 May 2019

A refugee camp for villagers displaced by the recent fighting in Buthidaung township. Nyan Lynn Aung/The Myanmar Times

Thousands of refugees in Rakhine State are worried that their temporary shelters in temporary camps are not strong enough to withstand the onset of the monsoon season.

Some shelters in refugee camps in Kyauktaw and Ponnagyun townships were damaged by the heavy rain and strong wind that pummelled the area for two hours on Saturday.

Registration gives many Rohingya refugees identification for the first time

UNHCR
By Alex St-Denis in Cox’s Bazar,
Bangladesh | 17 May 2019 

More than 270,000 stateless refugees from Myanmar provided with identity cards in an ongoing registration drive.

A family of Rohingya refugees hold up their identity cards after completing a UNHCR-run registration process at Kutupalong refugee settlement, Bangladesh.
© UNHCR/Will Swanson

Nasima Aktar is among hundreds of thousands of stateless Rohingya – many of whom have spent a lifetime without official documentation – for whom getting an official identity card is a significant step.

Aid workers race to prepare Bangladesh’s Rohingya refugee camps for monsoon wind, rain.

reliefweb
10 May 2019

Refugees plant vetiver grass on sandy slopes to prevent monsoon-related landslides

© IOM

Cox’s Bazar – When Cyclone Fani – one of the most powerful Indian Ocean storms of the past decade – barrelled up the Bay of Bengal a week ago making landfall in northern India and western Bangladesh, it left 24 people dead, a trail of destruction and thousands displaced. Some 2.6 million people – a million in India and 1.6 million in Bangladesh – were evacuated from its path, potentially saving thousands of lives.

Russian, Bangladesh foreign ministers meet in Moscow.

AA
Elena Teslova | 29.04.2019

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov calls on Myanmar and Bangladesh to solve Rohingya issue via dialogue

MOSCOW 

The question of the oppressed Rohingya people must be solved between Myanmar and Bangladesh via dialogue, Russia’s foreign minister said on Monday.

The international community has to provide support to the two states to find a mutually appropriate solution, Sergey Lavrov told a news conference in the capital Moscow after meeting his Bangladeshi counterpart AK Abdul Momen.

"I don't see any other decision, except bilateral, except a decision based on dialogue, on mutual understanding, as it must be between two neighbors," Lavrov said.

There is no progress on the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees to Myanmar -- which they fled to escape persecution -- but Bangladeshi officials have gathered refugees’ biometric data and now have more precise data on them, said Momen.

This information will help resolve the Rohingya issue, he said.

Persecuted people

The Rohingya, described by the UN as the world's most persecuted people, have faced heightened fears of attack since dozens were killed in communal violence in 2012.

According to Amnesty International, more than 750,000 Rohingya refugees, mostly women and children, have fled Myanmar and crossed into Bangladesh after Myanmar forces launched a crackdown on the minority Muslim community in August 2017.

Myanmar, Bangladesh to discuss repatriation May 3.

MYANMAR TIMES

NYAN LYNN AUNG | 24 APR 2019

Refugees from northern Rakhine State are seen at Kutubpalang camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, last August. Photo - EPA

Myanmar and Bangladesh officials will meet on May 3 in Nay Pyi Taw to discuss the much delayed repatriation of the more than 700,000 northern Rakhine State refugees living in cramped camps in Bangladesh. 

The fourth joint working group meeting of the countries will be the first between the two sides since the failed attempt to repatriate the first batch of refugees last December.

Unicef Malaysia ambassador Lisa Surihani moved to tears in Cox’s Bazar.

Star2 .com 
APRIL 19, 2019
BY S. INDRAMALAR

Unicef Malaysia national ambassador Lisa Surihani was overcome with emotion after listening to the Rohingya refugees share accounts of how they had to flee their homes in Myanmar. Photo: S. INDRAMALAR/The Star

On her first day at the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, actress Lisa Surihani’s eyes welled up with tears.

“I couldn’t control myself,” she shares. “I didn’t want to cry but hearing their stories … listening to what the women and children had to go through to escape from the violence in Myanmar and make their way to Bangladesh … it was truly unfathomable and I was overcome with a whole gamut of emotions.

Mahar students plan fundraiser for Rohingya refugees

GREENFIELD  RECORDER
By DAVID McLELLAN

Staff Writer

Published: 4/16/2019 

 Ralph C. Mahar Regional School seniors, from left, Amanda Calderon, Ally Frasier, Emma Currier, Lauren Henne, Jeanne Grutchfield, Tori Tenney and Ali Lundgren have spent their senior year researching the Rohingya refugee crisis. They will hold a fundraiser April 24. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

ORANGE — Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people have been displaced from their homes in the last decade — murdered by government forces, confined to concentration camps, their villages burned in their native Myanmar.