Bangladesh's Rohingya refugees in dire condition

A member of the Advisory Commission on the Rakhine State on Thursday said the conditions in which the Rohingya refugees were living at the refugee camps in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh were “inappropriate even for animals.” Al Haj U Aye Lwin, a member of the nine-member committee led by former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, made the statement to Burmese newspaper The Irrawaddy. He was one of the three commission members who recently visited the refugee camps in Cox's Bazar's Teknaf and Ukhiya upazilas. U Aye Lwin is also the co-founder of Religions for Peace Myanmar. The advisory commission made an official announcement on Thursday that the three delegates had travelled to Dhaka to explore Bangladeshi perspectives on the various challenges facing Rakhine. During the visit, they held meetings with Bangladesh Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali and Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, as well as an adviser to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, former Bangladeshi diplomats, and non-profit aid organisations, U Aye Lwin said. The Bangladeshi authorities led the three delegates to the sites of several Rohingya camps in Teknaf, he said. He added that the Bangladeshi officials had identified three categories of refugee housing: registered camps, makeshift camps and camps for new arrivals who fled the Maungdaw border region as a consequence of the Myanmar armed forces’ “clearance operations” and manhunt for assailants who attacked three border outposts on October 9, killing nine policemen. International rights groups have accused the Myanmar Army of committing rights abuses in the conflict zone, though the Myanmar government has rejected the allegations. U Aye Lwin told The Irrawaddy that the new arrivals were living in inhumane conditions. “The place where they live is inappropriate even for animals, not to mention humans. When I asked a child if he had eaten, he just cried instantly,” he said. According to statistics released by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Burma, the latest report released on Thursday states that a total of 92,000 people have been displaced since the October 2016 attacks on police posts in the northern Rakhine state. Among them, over 66,000 people have sought shelter in Bangladesh. Speaking to reporters after meeting with representatives from Bangladesh’s Institute of International and Strategic Studies on January 31, commission delegate Ghassan Salame said granting Myanmar citizenship to Muslims in Rakhine was “key to creating a better situation” and halting the flow of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh. U Aye Lwin said in a meeting with Bangladesh Police he questioned officials whether insurgents had come across the Maungdaw border for the purpose of recruitment – claims which have not been substantiated. The deputy commissioner of police in Cox’s Bazar reportedly said they “would not allow” security in the border areas to be compromised. U Aye Lwin said local Bangladeshis had disapproved of how the Rohingya refugees had cut down trees in the area to build makeshift shelters. They said they were also worried about job competition with the incoming population. While the recent wave of Rohingya refugees are facing difficulties accessing food and healthcare, a government notice from Dhaka expressed concern about “law and order issues” and said the country plans to relocate refugees to the Bangladeshi island of Thengar Char temporarily, to be returned to Myanmar eventually.