Move of Rohingya Refugees Poses Environmental and Human Rights Concerns

EcoWatch

Tina Gerhardt
Dec. 18, 2020

Rohingya refugees board a Bangladesh Navy ship to be transported to the island of Bhashan Char in Chittagong on December 4, 2020. AFP / Getty Images

On December 4, about 1,600 Rohingya traveled across the Bay of Bengal in seven navy boats from Chattogram to Bhasan Char. Bangladesh plans to move 100,000 families to the island.

The move poses serious concerns, both with regard to the environment and human rights.

Located about 18.6 miles (30 km) from the mainland, Bhasan Char is low-lying and prone to flooding. Therefore, it has been uninhabited. The island only formed in the past 20 years as a result of silt buildup. Bhasan Char rests at the confluence of three large rivers, the Brahmaputra, the Ganges and the Meghna River, which collectively bring rich deposits of silt to the bay.

Rohingya refugees are being displaced, again

Aljazeera

18 Dec 2020

Rohingya are seen inside a tent as they wait to get on board a ship as they move to Bhasan Char island in Chattogram, Bangladesh, December 4, 2020 [File: Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters]

Bangladesh has relocated more than 1,700 Rohingya refugees from crowded camps in the country’s southeast to Bhasan Char, an island prone to flooding, and it intends to relocate thousands more.

India needs to be more open and cooperative

Prothum Alo------ 

Touhid Hossain
Updated: 18 December 2020, 

It was obvious that there would be no progress on the Teesta agreement during the talks this time. We have no alternative but to depend on India regarding the Teesta agreement. I do not expect the agreement to be signed when Narenda Modi comes to Dhaka in March next year.

Bangladesh won its independence through bloodshed and the liberation war of 1971 with the support of India. Bangladesh is grateful for this support from its close neighbour. Even after independence Bangladesh has received support and cooperation from India. We always want friendly relations with India.

More than 100 UK MPs want intervention in The Gambia’s Rohingya genocide case

The Daily Star 

Star Online Report
December 18, 2020

 

Photo: AFP/File 

More than 100 UK MPs have called on the British government to make an intervention supporting The Gambia's Rohingya genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), as human rights violations against the Rohingyas continue.

"Ending impunity is essential not only to ensure justice and uphold international law, but also to deter further international crimes by the military in Myanmar," according to a letter to the UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Dominic Raab MP, issued on December 17.

Rohingya Women: A Life of Desperation

albawaba

Published December 17th, 2020

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 kilometers away in Malaysia.

Virtual weddings and international betrothals can seem an ideal solution.

US Pledges to Continue Support for Myanmar’s Democratic Transition

The Irrawaddy
By NAN LWIN
18 December 2020

YANGON — The United States has pledged to continue its support for Myanmar’s democratic transition and discussed cooperation on Rakhine State development, including creating a better environment for the Rohingya, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In a teleconference with Myanmar’s international cooperation minister, U Kyaw Tin, the outgoing deputy US secretary of state, Stephen Biegun, on Thursday, praised the Nov. 8 general election and discussed positive cooperation over Rakhine State, the ministry said.

The ministry said in a press release that U Kyaw Tin and Biegun discussed long-term cooperation in Rakhine State, including creating a better environment for refugees.

Moving refugees to Bashan Char is not a solution to Bangladesh’s Rohingya problem

ARAB NEWS

DR. AZEEM IBRAHIM
December 18, 2020

Now that the government of Bangladesh seems finally to have recognized the fact that the Rohingya will be in the country for the long haul, it has started looking for long-term options for managing the huge refugee population.

Authorities in Dhaka are correct that holding more than one million people in cramped conditions at Cox’s Bazaar is not a sustainable solution. But the authorities are wrong to believe that moving some of them to Bashan Char will help to solve the problem.

104 British MPs ask UK govt to support ICJ Rohingya case

NEWAGE

Diplomatic Correspondent  

Published: Dec 18,2020

In this picture taken on October 13, 2020, Rohingya refugee Julekha Begum, who got married through IMO, a video-call application to ‘Abdu Hamid’ (a pseudonym), a Rohingya hotel worker in Malaysia, cries at her makeshift shelter at Kutupalong Rohingya refugee camp in Ukhia.– AFP photo

One hundred and four British parliamentarians from across parties have asked the UK government to formally engage at the International Court of Justice to prevent genocidal violence against the minority ethnic Rohingya people by the Myanmar government and the military by extending formal support to the case filed by the Gambia.

‘Ending impunity is essential not only to ensure justice and uphold international law, but also to deter further acts of genocide by the military and government in Myanmar,’ said the bipartisan parliamentarians in a joint memorandum to British secretary of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs Dominic Raab on Thursday. 

Sesame Street creates Rohingya muppets for refugee children

B B C 

18 December 2020

The US children's show Sesame Street has created two new muppets to help deliver early years education to Rohingya children living in the world's largest refugee camp.

Noor and Aziz are six-year-old twins who will feature in a series of educational videos for children living in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar.

Since 2017, more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled a brutal army crackdown in neighbouring Myanmar.

ဂမ်ဘီယာက ICJ မှာ မြန်မာကိုစွဲချက်တဲ့အမှု တနှစ်ပြည့်ပေ မယ့် ပြောင်းလဲမှုမရှိသေး (ရိုဟင်ဂျာအရေး တက်ကြွလှုပ် ရှားသူ)

VOA

ဗွီအိုအေ (မြန်မာပိုင်း)
19 ဒီဇင်ဘာ၊ 2020 

ICJ နိုင်ငံတကာတရားရုံးမှာ ဂမ်ဘီယာက မြန်မာကို လူမျိုးတုန်းသတ်ဖြတ်မှု စွဲချက်နဲ့ တရားစွဲဆိုထားတာ တနှစ်ပြည့်သွားပြီဖြစ်ပေမဲ့ ရခိုင်ပြည်နယ်မှာ ရိုဟင်ဂျာတွေရဲ့ အခြေအနေဟာ ဘာမှ ပြောင်းလဲတိုးတက်  ခြင်း မရှိသေးဘူးလို့ ပြည်ပရောက် ရိုဟင်ဂျာတွေက ပြောဆိုလိုက်ပါတယ်။ ကုလသမဂ္ဂလုံခြုံရေးကောင်စီအနေနဲ့ ကြားဝင်ဆောင်ရွက်ဖို့လည်း တောင်းဆိုခဲ့ကြပါတယ်။

ရိုဟင်ဂျာဒုက္ခသည်တွေကို လူကုန်ကူးတဲ့ကွန်ရက်

မောင်း 
By Maun Writer
December 18, 2020

ဘင်္ဂလားဒေရှ့် ဒုက္ခသည်စခန်းတွေ မှာ နေထိုင်နေတဲ့ ရိုဟင်ဂျာ ဒုက္ခသည်တွေကို မလေးရှားနိုင်ငံကို ပို့ပေး မယ်လို့ ဆိုပြီး စည်းရုံးပြောဆိုကာ လူကုန်ကူးမှုတွေ ရှိနေတယ်လို့ AFP သတင်း ဌာန က စုံစမ်းဖော်ထုတ်ခဲ့ ပါတယ်။

အင်းဒင်ရွာ အသတ်ခံရသူတစ်ဦးရဲ့ဇနီး ဒေါ်လာ နှစ်သန်း နစ်နာကြေးတောင်း

လွတ်လပ်တဲ့အာရှအသံ ( RFA )
မြန်မာဌာန | သတင်းများ
ကျော်လွင်ဦး
2020-12-18 

ဆဲသာရာဘေဂမ် (Setara Begum ) ရဲ့ ခင်ပွန်းဖြစ်သူ အသက် ၂၃ နှစ်အရွယ် ရှော်ကတ်အုလ္လာ (Shoket Ullah) ဟာ ၂၀၁၇ ခုနှစ် စက်တင်ဘာလက အင်းဒင်ကျေးရွာမှာ အစုလိုက် အပြုံလိုက် သတ်ဖြတ်မှုခံရပြီး မြေမြှုပ်ခံလိုက်ရတဲ့ အမျိုးသား ၁၀ ယောက်ထဲက တစ်ယောက်ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

National committee formed to coordinate Rohingya-related activities

The Daily Star 

BSS, Dhaka
Thursday, December 17, 2020

The government has formed a national committee to coordinate and manage overall activities, including controlling law and order, of the forcibly displaced Myanmar-nationals in the camp areas of Bangladesh.

The Cabinet Division has formed a 17-member committee for coordinating, managing and maintaining law and order of Rohingyas by publishing a gazette where the home minister has been made its convener.

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.

This Week’s Under-reported News Summary – Dec. 16, 2020

Between the lines
Compiled by Bob Nixon
Dec. 3, 2020 

• Halt relocation of Rohingya refugees to remote island
• Making coal history
• NYPD cops cash in sex trade arrests with little evidence

 Thousands of Rohingya refugees, who fled mass violence in Myanmar are being relocated to an uninhabited island in the Bay of Bengal, named Bhasan Char. In early December, Bangladeshi authorities transported over 1,600 refugees there from a massive camp on the border with Myanmar. Human rights groups protested the move, charging that the refugees were forcibly relocated to the island. Facilities there had not been inspected by the United Nations. Bangladesh plans to send a total of 100,000 refugees to low-lying Bhasan Char, which is vulnerable to cyclones and other dangerous storms.

Traffickers: Selling False Dreams To The Rohingya

THE ASEAN POST
Athira Nortajuddin 

16 December 2020 

This photo taken on 25 June, 2020 shows six-year-old Nosmin Fatima (R) with other Rohingya migrants as they arrive in Lhokseumawe in North Aceh. (AFP Photo)

 

From Rakhine state in Myanmar, the Rohingya are an ethnic community of largely Muslim people. Perhaps a million of them have fled from violence in the ASEAN member state in successive waves of displacement since the early 1990s. In 2017, hundreds of thousands more fled Myanmar to escape persecution, war crimes and alleged genocide.

Today, over 900,000 Rohingya live in camps in Cox’s Bazar in southeast Bangladesh – the world’s largest refugee settlement. Some have escaped to other neighbouring countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia – said to be among the Rohingya’s favoured destinations.

‘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.

သေဆုံးပြီ ထင်ကာ ဇနီးနဲ့ သမီးကို အသုဘချပြီးမှ ပြန်လည် ဆုံဆည်းနိုင်ခဲ့တဲ့ ရိုဟင်ဂျာ မိသားစု

မဇ္ဈိမ 

ဒီဇင်ဘာ ၁၇ ၊ ၂၀၂၀

                                                                 Photo: AFP

ရိုဟင်ဂျာအမျိုးသား နီမတ်ရှာဟာ သူ့ဆီ လာဖို့ကြိုးစားရင်း သူ့ဇနီးနဲ့ သမီးဟာ ပင်လယ်ပြင်မှာ သေဆုံးခဲ့ရပြီ လို့ ယူဆပြီး အသုဘချပေးခဲ့ပါတယ်။

အာရကန် (ရခိုင်ပြည်နယ်) မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအေနာက်ဘက်ဒေ သမှ ပဋိပက္ခမြေ

ရိုဟင်ဂျာဒုက္ခသည်နဲ့ လူကုန်ကူးမှုကွန်ယက်

VOA

ဗွီအိုအေ (မြန်မာဌာန)
မသိင်္ဂီထိုက်
16 ဒီဇင်ဘာ၊ 2020 

 လှေတစင်းပေါ်တွေ့ရတဲ့ ရိုဟင်ဂျာ ဒုက္ခသည်များ။ (သြဂုတ် ၂၆၊ ၂၀၂၀)

 

ဘင်္ဂလားဒေ့ရှ် စခန်းတွေက ရိုဟင်ဂျာ ဒုက္ခသည်တွေကို မလေးရှားကို ပို့ဆောင်ပေးတဲ့ လူကုန်ကူးမှုဟာ ဆန်း ပြား ရှုပ်ထွေးပြီး စခန်းတွင်းက လူတွေ အဓိက ပါဝင်ပတ်သတ်နေတဲ့ ဒေါ်လာ သန်းချီတဲ့ လုပ်ငန်းဖြစ်တယ် ဆို တာကို ဒီ လူကုန်ကူးမှု ကွန်ရက်ထဲမှာ ပါတဲ့ သူတွေနဲ့ စုံစမ်း မေးမြန်းမှုကနေ ထွက်ပေါ်လာပါတယ်။ လူ ၁,၀၀၀ ဆန့်တဲ့ ထိုင်း မှတ်ပုံတင် ငါးဖမ်း သင်္ဘောတွေ၊ ဂြိုဟ်တုဖုန်းတွေ၊ ထောက်ပံ့ရေး ရေယာဉ်ငယ်၊ ဘင်္ဂလားဒေရှ့် စခန်းတွေနဲ့ အရှေ့တောင် အာရှ တလွှားက လာဘ်စားတဲ့ အာဏာပိုင်တွေဟာ ဒီကွန်ယက်ကြီးထဲမှာ ပါဝင်ပတ်သက်နေတယ်လို့ AFP ရဲ့ စုံစမ်းဖော်ထုတ်ထားတဲ့ ဆောင်းပါးက ဖော်ပြပါတယ်။ မသိင်္ဂ ီထိုက် တင်ပြပေးမှာပါ။