Bangladesh stops more Rohingyas
Source: Agencies |
June 19, 2012, Tuesday
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Print Edition
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BANGLADESHI officials yesterday intercepted an additional 128 Rohingya refugees fleeing sectarian violence in western Myanmar, and said they would be detained for a while and then sent back home.
Some 2,000 members of the Muslim Rohingya ethnic group have tried to enter Bangladesh after fleeing violence in recent weeks in Myanmar's troubled Rakhine state between Buddhists and Rohingyas that has left dozens of people dead.
But they have all been either turned back or detained. Bangladesh says its resources already are too strained and has refused to accept the Rohingyas despite calls from the United Nations to grant them refugee status.
The latest group - mostly women and children - arrived yesterday in five boats at an island in the Bay of Bengal near the border with Myanmar, said Lieutenant Colonel Zahid Hasan, commander of Border Guard Bangladesh. Authorities planned to provide them food and water, and then send them back home at an unspecified later time, he said.
Abdus Sobhan, 52, who was among the new refugees, said he and his neighbors from the Maungdaw area of Rakhine headed for Bangladesh because they feared torture by Myanmar security forces in a crackdown following this month's violence.
The unrest - triggered by the rape and murder last month of a Buddhist girl, allegedly by three Muslims, and the June 3 lynching of 10 Muslims in apparent retaliation - stems from long-standing tensions.
Some 2,000 members of the Muslim Rohingya ethnic group have tried to enter Bangladesh after fleeing violence in recent weeks in Myanmar's troubled Rakhine state between Buddhists and Rohingyas that has left dozens of people dead.
But they have all been either turned back or detained. Bangladesh says its resources already are too strained and has refused to accept the Rohingyas despite calls from the United Nations to grant them refugee status.
The latest group - mostly women and children - arrived yesterday in five boats at an island in the Bay of Bengal near the border with Myanmar, said Lieutenant Colonel Zahid Hasan, commander of Border Guard Bangladesh. Authorities planned to provide them food and water, and then send them back home at an unspecified later time, he said.
Abdus Sobhan, 52, who was among the new refugees, said he and his neighbors from the Maungdaw area of Rakhine headed for Bangladesh because they feared torture by Myanmar security forces in a crackdown following this month's violence.
The unrest - triggered by the rape and murder last month of a Buddhist girl, allegedly by three Muslims, and the June 3 lynching of 10 Muslims in apparent retaliation - stems from long-standing tensions.
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