Give humanitarian assistance to Rohingya refugees: Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen

The Daily Star

Star Digital Report
February 26, 2021

Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen has requested the UN to provide humanitarian assistance for the Rohingyas in Bhasan Char, where a housing facility has been developed for one lakh Rohingyas.

"The Foreign Minister explained the Secretary General of the measures taken by the Government in Bhasan char and requested the UN's support for humanitarian assistance there for the Rohingyas," said Bangladesh's Permanent Mission to the UN in New York in a statement today, referring to a virtual meeting between them.

Momen has been visiting the USA since February 22. He already spoke to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken over phone, held meeting with US Congresswoman Grace Meng.

Indian Coast Guard found boat carrying Rohingya refugees; 8 dead: MEA

BUSINESS STANDARD
ANI,Asia
February 25, 2021

The Indian coast guard has found a boat adrift in the Andaman Sea carrying Rohingya refugees, including eight people who had died, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Thursday.

The Indian coast guard has found a boat adrift in the Andaman Sea carrying Rohingya refugees, including eight people who had died, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Thursday.

Speaking at a videoconference briefing, spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said that on February 11, a boat sailed from Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh carrying 64 women including 8 girls and 26 men including 5 boys.

"The engine of the boat failed on February 15 and since then it has been drifting. Due to the severe conditions, we understand that eight occupants have died and one of the occupants had been missing since February 15," Srivastava said.

Rohingya Refugees From Myanmar Adrift In Indian Ocean

NPR

Heard on Morning Edition
February 25, 2021

Human rights groups say a boat trafficking over 90 Muslim minority Rohingya from Myanmar has broken down. They have little food & water and nobody wants them

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Human rights groups say more than 90 Muslim-minority Rohingya who fled Myanmar are now adrift in the Indian Ocean. The boat trafficking them has broken down. They've got little food or water on board, and it seems like there's little interest in saving them. Michael Sullivan reports from neighboring Thailand.

Rohingya refugees: UN agency urges immediate rescue to prevent ‘tragedy’ on Andaman Sea

INDIA BLOOMS
23 Feb 2021,

New York: The UN refugee agency (UNHCR), on Monday, called for immediate efforts to search and rescue a group of Rohingya refugees, who have been adrift on the Andaman Sea for over a week.

The precise number and location of the refugees is unknown, and there are reports that many may have already lost their lives, Indrika Ratwatte, Director of the UNHCR Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific, located in Bangkok, said in news release. The last information of distress was received on Saturday evening, local time.

Rohingya Refugee Response - Bangladesh Factsheet - Protection (December 2020)

‘People Will Face More Violence’: Rohingya Refugees React to Myanmar Coup

VICE
Verena Hölzl
02.02.2021

 

They feared for their relatives still in Myanmar and worried about the prospect of ever returning home. 

Rohingya refugee children play football in Kutupalong refugee camp in Ukhia on Oct. 11, 2020. Photo: Munir Uz Zaman / AFP

Rohingya refugee Mozuna Khatu was initially happy when she heard that Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi had been detained.
“Praise god, maybe we can go home now,” she told VICE World News from a sprawling camp in Bangladesh, where more than one million Rohingya live after being driven from their homes in Myanmar in waves of state-backed violence.

Bangladesh hands Myanmar list of 230,000 more Rohingya refugees for repatriation

bdnews24.com 

Staff Correspondent, bdnews24.com
Published: 12 Jan 2021

                                                                       File Photo 

The government has handed a list of 230,000 more Rohingya refugees to Myanmar for repatriation to their homeland in Rakhine State.


Delwar Hossain, the director general of the foreign ministry’s Myanmar wing, said on Tuesday that he gave the list to the Myanmar ambassador in Dhaka on Monday.

In six phases, including the latest one, Bangladesh has handed lists of 830,000 Rohingya to Myanmar, which has verified only 42,000 refugees, but the repatriation has not begun.

Rohingya refugees: From crowded camps to isolated island

Aljazeera

Mahmud Hossain Opu

31 Dec 2020

 

Al Jazeera travels with Rohingya to flood-prone Bhashan Char island where Bangladesh wants to move about 100,000 refugees. 

 

Rohingya refugees prepare to board a ship as they move to Bhasan Char island near Chattogram [Mahmud Hossain Opu/Al Jazeera]

The Bangladeshi government has relocated more than 3,000 Rohingya to a remote island in the Bay of Bengal, despite concerns from rights groups that many of the persecuted refugees might have been coerced into moving to the flood-prone island.

At least 1,800 refugees were shipped to the Bhashan Char island on Tuesday, weeks after the first batch of 1,600 Rohingya were transferred. The government plans to eventually move 100,000 Rohingya to the remote island as it aims to decongest refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, which shelter approximately one million Rohingya.-

Bangladesh moves largest group of Rohingya refugees to remote island

FRANCH 24

30/12/2020

 

Bangladesh Navy personnel help a Rohingya refugee child to get off a navy vessel as they arrive at the Bhasan Char island in Noakhali district, Bangladesh, December 29, 2020. © Mohammad Ponir Hossain, REUTERS 

 

 

Four Bangladesh navy ships on Tuesday took the second and biggest group of Rohingya Muslims yet from crowded refugee camps to an uncertain future on a bleak island three hours from the mainland.

The government insisted that the 1,800 refugees, who have been in camps since fleeing a Myanmar military clampdown, want to start new lives on Bhashan Char, where 1,600 others arrived earlier this month.

But rights activists expressed new doubts about the transfers. They said some Rohingya had their shanty homes in the camps on the Myanmar border padlocked so they had no choice.

The Bangladesh government eventually wants to rehouse 100,000 of the camps' approximately one million Rohingya on the island, which takes the full force of cyclones that roar across the Bay of Bengal each year.

Bangladesh moves more Rohingyas to remote island despite rights concerns

The Guardian

Veena Thoopkrajae
Bangkok
Mon 28 Dec 2020

Activists say the island of Bhasan Char is not safe and that the refugees are being moved against their will 

Rohingya refugees aboard bound for Bhasan Char island in early December. Photograph: Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters

 

Bangladesh has begun moving the second group of Rohingya refugees from crammed camps in Cox’s Bazar to a remote island in the Bay of Bengal, in defiance of safety and security concerns from international rights advocates.

Groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have urged the Bangladeshi government to halt the relocation of Rohingya to Bhasan Char, which is hours by boat from the mainland, flood-prone, vulnerable to frequent cyclones and could be completely submerged during a high tide.

Bangladesh to ship new group of Rohingya refugees to remote island

REUTERS

By Ruma Paul 

December 28, 2020

DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh will move a second group of Rohingya refugees to a low-lying island in the Bay of Bengal on Tuesday, officials said, despite calls by rights groups to stop the relocation on safety grounds 

FILE PHOTO: Buffaloes are seen on the island of Bhasan Char in the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh February 14, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo

 

More than 1,100 Rohingya refugees, members of a Muslim minority who have fled Myanmar, will be moved from a refugee camp near the Myanmar border to Bhasan Char island, two officials with the knowledge of the issue said.

Authorities moved the first batch of more than 1,600 early this month.

“Buses and trucks are ready to carry them and their belongings to Chittagong port today. Tonight, they will stay there. Tomorrow they will be taken by naval ships to the island,” one of the officials said on Monday.

The officials declined to be identified as the issue has not been made public.

WFP Bangladesh: Rohingya Refugee Response | Situation Report #44 (November 2020)

WFP
Situation ReportSource
21 Dec 2020

864,281 Rohingya refugees in the camps*

(52% children, 45% adult, 3% older persons and 1% persons with disability)

113,157 household (570,000 people) in the host community received assistance through the COVID-19 special support programme from April to November 2020.

Highlights

• WFP currently has nine operational Fresh Food Corners at e-voucher outlets and inkind distribution points and provided fresh vegetables to over 99,000 vulnerable Rohingya refugees in November.

• WFP conducted environment and social safeguard screenings of 115 community workfare schemes and 18 camp-wide tree maintenance sites to ensure that planned activities will not have an adverse impact on ecosystems and communities.

Part II: Refugees trafficking network’s route to false salvation

MYANMAR TIMES 

AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE
17 DEC 2020

Northern Rakhine Muslim refugees alight from a ship that brought them to Aceh Indonesia in June. Photo: AFP

 

For the northern Rakhine Muslim refugees, escaping the Bangladesh camp starts with a down payment that can reach the equivalent of $2,000, often paid by a northern Rakhine Muslim's husband or other relatives in Malaysia using mobile banking applications.

 

Refugees then get a phone call typically from someone they do not know.

"The call came after a few days and a man instructed us to go to the rickshaw stand in the main food market area of the camp," said 20-year-old Julekha Begum, who married a northern Rakhine Muslim man in Malaysia via a video chat app.

‘What choice do we have?’

The Daily Star

AFP, Kutupalong
December 17, 2020 

After escaping prosecution in Myanmar, Rohingya women face odyssey of misery

In this file photo taken on September 7, 2020, Rohingya migrants look on following their arrival by boat in Lhokseumawe, Aceh, Indonesia. Photo: AFP

 

Stay in a squalid refugee camp -- hopeless, starving, and made to feel a burden -- or leave, risking death, rape, human trafficking and months at sea to reach a husband you've never met.

This is the bleak choice many Rohingya women, already scarred from fleeing violent persecution in Myanmar, are now facing.

As conditions deteriorate in increasingly overcrowded Bangladeshi refugee camps, desperate parents are marrying off their daughters to Rohingya men thousands of kilometres (miles) away in Malaysia.

Video shows Rohingya refugees beaten by traffickers on boat

TRT World Now
Dec 16, 2020

AFP news agency has obtained video evidence showing brutal treatment that Rohingya refugees are facing at the hands of the traffickers. We speak to Co-founder at Free Rohingya Coalition Nay San Lwin.

#Rohingya #Smugglers #HumanTrafficking

Link : Here

Commission redistributes nearly £200,000 to Rohingya refugees as two trustees are disqualified

Charity Today

15/12/2020

A Charity Commission inquiry, published today (Tuesday 15 December), is highly critical of a pair who raised money for Rohingya refugees but could not show how all funds were used.

The Commission has redistributed approximately £196,000 of the money Mr Mohammed Hasnath and Ms Ruksana Ali (the former trustees) raised and both have been removed as trustees from the fund and disqualified.

The former trustees operated two online fundraising platforms, creating a fund for Rohingya refugees. Whilst they never registered the fund as a charity, its stated purpose made it charitable under the law.

Fears of forced removals as Bangladesh moves hundreds of Rohingya refugees to remote island

KRDO

By CNN
Published December 8, 2020

 

Hundreds of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are being relocated to a controversial island facility in the Bay of Bengal today amid fears that some could be coerced to move there and held indefinitely.

A ship carrying 1642 refugees is traveling to Bhasan Char, an island about 40 kilometers (24 miles) off the coast near the city of Chittagong, according to Shahriar Alam, Bangladesh Minister of State for Foreign Affairs.

The Bangladeshi government has spent years constructing a network of shelters on the island to accommodate up to 100,000 people currently living in sprawling refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, near the Myanmar border.

But human rights groups and the refugees themselves have long expressed concerns over the safety of the uninhabited, low-lying island, as it often becomes partially submerged during monsoon season and is vulnerable to cyclones.

Fears of forced removals as Bangladesh moves hundreds of Rohingya refugees to remote island

CNN

Helen Regan and Rebecca Wright, 
Updated -December 5, 2020

Hundreds of Rohingya refugees being relocated to island 02:56

(CNN)Hundreds of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are being relocated to a controversial island facility in the Bay of Bengal today amid fears that some could be coerced to move there and held indefinitely. 

A ship carrying 1642 refugees is traveling to Bhasan Char, an island about 40 kilometers (24 miles) off the coast near the city of Chittagong, according to Shahriar Alam, Bangladesh Minister of State for Foreign Affairs.

Facilities on Bhasan Char island can accommodate up to 100,000 refugees. Credit: Salman Saeed

Rohingya refugees ferried to floating Bangladesh island

EAST BAY TIMES

By The Associated Press |
PUBLISHED: December 4, 2020
By Julhas Alam | Associated Press

About 700,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar in August 2017

A health worker checks the temperature of Rohingya Muslims arriving at Bhasan Char, or floating island, in the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh. Authorities in Bangladesh have begun relocating thousands of Rohingya refugees to an isolated island despite calls by human rights groups for a halt to the process. (AP Photo/Saleh Noman)

DHAKA, Bangladesh — Authorities in Bangladesh on Friday sent the first group of more than 1,500 Rohingya refugees to an isolated island despite calls by human rights groups for a halt to the process.

The 1,642 refugees boarded seven Bangladeshi naval vessels in the port of Chittagong for the trip to Bhashan Char, according to an official who could not be named in accordance with local practice.

After about a three-hour trip they arrived at the island, which was once regularly submerged by monsoon rains but now has flood protection embankments, houses, hospitals and mosques built at a cost of more than $112 million by the Bangladesh navy.

Located 21 miles from the mainland, the island surfaced only 20 years ago and was never inhabited.

Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh Being Moved to Isolated Island in “Dangerous Mass Detention”

DEMOCRACY

NOW!

HEADLINE

DEC 04, 2020

In Bangladesh, human rights advocates are condemning the relocation of thousands of Rohingya refugees to an isolated island — hours away from the mainland. Police on Thursday escorted refugees, who were put on buses for the long trek from Cox’s Bazar to a port town, where they’ll then be put on boats en route to Bhasan Char island, which is prone to flooding, frequent cyclones, and only emerged from the ocean two decades ago. The island has never been inhabited. Two aid workers told Reuters refugees were pressured into the move by government officials, who threatened them or offered them cash in exchange. Human Rights Watch called the refugees’ relocation “nothing short of a dangerous mass detention of the Rohingya people in violation of international human rights obligations.”

Link : Here