Hard for Bangladesh ‘to take the hit of Myanmar’s violence anymore’: Top Bangladeshi diplomat

AA
Faisal Mahmud
DHAKA, Bangladesh
06.02.2024

‘We can’t hold more Myanmar people,’ Hasan Mahmud tells Anadolu as cross-border firing into Bangladesh kills 2 as ethnic clashes intensify

Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Hasan Mahmud told Anadolu on Tuesday that it will be hard for Bangladesh “to take the hit of Myanmar’s violence anymore.”

New IRC analysis: Domestic partners perpetrate 94% of gender-based violence against Rohingya women in Cox’s Bazar

International  

RESCUE  

Committee

Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh,
Press Release
January 25, 2021 

Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, January 25, 2021 — New data from the International Rescue Committee (IRC) reveals that 94% of Rohingya women and girls living in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, who have reported incidents of Gender-Based Violence (GBV), have experienced it at the hands of their partners.

Following the onset of COVID-19, lockdown measures were introduced in Cox’s Bazar that confined many women to their shelters, often shared with their abusers. Initial IRC data from between June - December 2019, captured before the virus took hold, indicated that 81% of women who reported GBV had experienced domestic violence. Alarmingly, new IRC analysis shows that this figure has risen to 94% between January - October 2020, as the effects of the lockdown were fully realised.

Since January 2020, screening data from IRC programming shows that an average of one in four women and girls screened at health facilities and women’s in Cox’s Bazar continue to report they are survivors of Gender-Based Violence (GBV), consistent with the findings of IRC’s June 2020 Shadow Pandemic report. Despite the enormous new challenges women and girls face in reporting - including reductions in the availability of NGO services, limitations on refugees’ freedom of movement, and for many GBV survivors, quarantine at home with their abuser - the data shows a spike in reported rates of physical assault as compared to other types of violence that coincide with the first month of lockdown. In reality this is likely a fraction of the overall number.

Rohingya trafficking network sells dreams, delivers violence and extortion

FRANCH 24 

Cox's Bazar (Bangladesh) (AFP)

Issued on: 15/12/2020 - 

A months-long AFP investigation uncovered mobile phone images taken by a smuggler aboard a boat - AFP

Auto rickshaws slip easily past barbed-wire checkpoints at the world's biggest refugee camp, their drivers among the smallest players in a complex human trafficking network involving high-seas extortion gangs, corrupt police and drug lords.

Aboard the spluttering rickshaws are small groups of young men, women and children hoping to escape the misery of life with other members of their stateless Rohingya group who are crowded into shanties in Bangladesh.

Violence is returning to Burma’s Rakhine State

GLOBAL COMMENT
By Steve Shaw
Posted on May 1, 2019

 The farmers who had been tending to cows and seeing to paddy fields didn’t stand a chance when the peaceful evening on April 3 was shattered by two military attack helicopters.

By the time the bombs had stopped falling and the pointless barrage was over, at least seven were dead and another 18 injured.

Rape, abuse, violence: Rohingya women and girls most vulnerable in refugee camps

Star2.com

April 26, 2019

By S. INDRAMALAR

Photos By The Star/Azhar Mahfof

Young mother Senoura is trying the best she can to make sure her baby is not malnourished. But with hardly any money, depending only on food rations, she is worried for her young one.

Every morning, 20-year-old Gulbahar rushes to finish her housework and cook for her family so she can spend more time at the Safe Space for Women and Girls, a women-only space supported by Unicef at the Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

The safe space, she says, is more than just a respite from the harsh conditions in the camp (and the tiny shelter she lives in). In that female-only space, Gulbahar is being empowered and equipped with vocational skills that she never thought she’d have the chance to acquire.

PHR study demonstrates widespread violence against Rohingya in Myanmar

theindepedent  
22 March, 2019 

Physicians for Human Rights conducted quantitative survey with leaders of almost 600 Rohingya communities displaced to refugee camps in Bangladesh; PHR calls for investigation, accountability 

Independent Online Desk

This week, The Lancet Planetary Health, a leading scientific journal focused on policy action for planetary health, published the complete findings of a quantitative survey conducted by Physicians for Human Rights.

Latest Violence in Myanmar Confirms Worst Suspicions

THE I DIPLOMAT

By Luke Hunt, February 28, 2019

Continued conflict suggests a long road ahead for vulnerable populations in the country.

Earlier this month, a new round of reports began surfacing suggesting that people were fleeing escalating violence in Myanmar’s southern Chin state and Rakhine state because of a deteriorating security situation. The reports once again spotlighted the ongoing worst suspicions about how peace and conflict issues are being addressed in Myanmar under the government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Daw Suu's Rakhine investment forum speech in full.

MYANMAR TIMES
THIHA KO KO | 23 FEB 2019

State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi speaking during the opening ceremony of the Invest Myanmar Summit 2019. Photo - EPA

State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi touted Rakhine State's "untapped" economic potential to investors and trade organisations on Friday in a Japan-sponsored investment forum held in Ngapali beach. But she glossed over violence and humanitarian nightmare in the area, saying the international community had “focused narrowly on negative aspects” of the ongoing northern Rakhine crisis, which led to an estimated 730,000 Muslim refugees fleeing to Bangladesh.

( 20.11.2016 ) UN urges Bangladesh to keep border open in wake of Myanmar violence

Dhaka | Sun, November 20, 2016 

 An armed police officer guards stands with Muslim refugees at a refugee camp in Sittwe, capital of Rakhine State, western Myanmar, on Saturday. Western An armed police officer guards stands with Muslim refugees at a refugee camp in Sittwe, capital of Rakhine State, western Myanmar, on Oct. 27, 2012. (AP/Khin Maung Win )

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has called on Bangladesh to keep its border open and has appealed to Myanmar to safeguard the civilian population in northern Rakhine.