Rakhine refugee leader killed
ATTACKERS on Monday killed a Rohingya representative in a Bangladesh refugee camp, the second such death in three days as tensions mount over the planned repatriation of some 750,000 refugees to Myanmar.
Sources said the dead man Yusuf Ali was a camp leader at the Balukhali camp on the border with Myanmar. Muhammad Yusuf, a leader in the neighbouring Thaingkhali camp, was shot dead last Friday.
Yusuf Ali, 60, was stabbed to death, district police chief Iqbal Hossain said. Another police official described him as a Rohingya majhi or camp leader.
The Dhaka Tr i b u n e described the earlier victim, Muhammad Yusuf, as a prorepatriation leader.
His wife, Jamila Khatun, 35, said some 20 armed and masked men stormed their home and and shot her husband in the head. “He
shouted ‘Oh Allah!’ and they shot him again in the mouth. He fell down. They spoke Rohingya. They were saying to my husband: ‘Why did you put our name on the list?’ They were furious.”
She did not say which list the attackers were referring to.
Bangladesh authorities have been trying to draw up a list of Rohingya, among nearly 1 million in camps on the border, who could be sent back to Myanmar.
Following an agreement with Myanmar, Bangladesh authorities had wanted to start the repatriations yesterday but have delayed the operation – saying they need more time to prepare.
Local media and a Rohingya leader have linked the killings to fears of being sent back. Hundreds of Rohingya have taken part in protests against repatriation in recent days.
Bangladesh to blame
Myanmar blamed Bangladesh yesterday for delays to the repatriation program for Rohingya.
Myanmar agreed that from January 23 it would start taking them back from the squalid camps in the Cox’s Bazar district of Bangladesh where they have sought shelter.
But a Bangladeshi official said on Monday the program would not begin as planned.
Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner Mohammad Abul Kalam said there was much more work to be done.
The complex process of registering huge numbers of the dispossessed has been further cast into doubt by the refugees themselves, who are too afraid to return.
Myanmar has been accused of drawing out the repatriation process by agreeing to take back just 1,500 people a week.
It has prepared two reception camps on its side of the border.
Myanmar officials said that by yesterday afternoon no Rohingya had crossed back into Rakhine, the scene of alleged widespread atrocities by Myanmar’s army and ethnic Rakhine mobs.
“We are right now ready to receive . . . we are completely ready to welcome them according to the agreement,” Kyaw Tin, minister of international cooperation, told reporters in Naypyidaw, Myanmar’s capital.
“We have seen the news that the Bangladesh side is not ready, but we have not received any official” explanation, he added.
With hundreds of Rohingya villages torched and communal tensions still at boiling point in Rakhine, rights groups say returnees will at best be herded into long-term camps. Those who return must sign a form verifying they did so voluntarily and pledging to abide by Myanmar laws.
Myanmar has sent a list of over 1,000“wanted” alleged Rohingya militants to Bangladesh, while headshot photos of the suspects have been widely circulated inside the country.
Many in the camps are fearful of going back to their homes.
“We won’t go there if they try to send us back . . . kill us here, because we won’t go. If we go back, the Burmese [Myanmar] will kill us,” 12-year-old Mohammad Ayas said yesterday at a camp at Cox’s Bazar.
Others said repatriation was a pipe dream while people were still trickling into the camps.
Mohammad Amin, who arrived just last week, described villages being set ablaze and women assaulted.
“Things are not better there [in Myanmar]. We managed to stay longer than others but eventually we had to leave,” he said.
Bangladesh has been besieged by an influx of Rohingya since communal violence flared in 2016. It has tried to use the global outcry over the crisis to press Myanmar into taking back the refugees before they settle – joining an estimated 200,000 Rohingya stuck in Cox’s Bazar camps since a previous bout of violence in the 1990s.