Bangladesh to send hundreds more Rohingya to remote island

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 27 December 2020 9:06 AM

Bangladesh is set to send hundreds more Rohingya Muslim refugees to a controversial facility on a remote island in the Bay of Bengal, weeks after it started their forced removal from the border with Myanmar.

The government will send around 1,000 Rohingya refugees to the island of Bhasan Char in the Bay of Bengal this month, officials said on Sunday.

"They will be moved to Chittagong first and then to Bhasan Char, depending on the high tide," one of the officials said.

The Bangladeshi government constructed a network of shelters on the island to relocate up to 100,000 refugees currently living in cramped camps in Cox's Bazar, near the Myanmar border.

Earlier this month, it sent more than 1,600 refugees to the remote island despite calls from human rights groups, who said the relocation was "coercive."

A government official in charge of refugees Mohammed Shamsud Douza, claimed that the relocation was voluntary and that they were transferring only people who were willing to go. "They will not be sent against their will," he said.

Aid workers, however, said officials used threats and enticements to pressure people into leaving Cox's Bazar.

The refugees being relocated are among more than 730,000 Rohingya Muslims, who fled a state-sponsored crackdown in Myanmar's Rakhine state.

Thousands of Rohingya Muslims were killed, injured, arbitrarily arrested, or raped by Myanmar soldiers and Buddhist mobs mainly between November 2016 and August 2017.

The Rohingya are widely seen as illegal immigrants in Myanmar and denied the right of citizenship. Bangladesh refuses to grant them citizenship, too.

Israel's complicity in Myanmar war crimes

A human rights group, the Justice for Myanmar, has revealed that Myanmar has committed atrocities against the Rohingya in complicity with Israel.

The group said an Israeli company, Gilat Satellite Networks, has provided Myanmar's military with its technology, during the atrocities in the Rakhine state.

Gilat is complicit in Myanmar's war crimes and crimes against humanity, the Justice for Myanmar said in a report released this week.

Israel provided Myanmar's military junta with over 100 tanks and boats as well as other sorts of weapons in September 2017.