Silt island for Rohingya
REFUGEES: ‘NOT A CONCENTRATION CAMP BUT THERE ARE RESTRICTIONS’
Aid agencies criticise Bangladesh’s plan, saying it’s a dangerous location.
Bangladesh is racing to turn an uninhabited and muddy Bay of Bengal island into home for 100 000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled a military crackdown in Myanmar, amid conflicting signals from top Bangladeshi officials about whether the refugees would end up being stranded there.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said this week that putting Rohingya on the lowlying island would be a “temporary arrangement” to ease congestion at the camps in Cox’s Bazar, refuge for nearly 700 000 who have crossed from the north of Myanmar’s Rakhine state since the end of August last year.
However, one of her advisors said that once on the island, they would only be able to leave to go back to Myanmar or if they were selected for asylum by a third country. “It’s not a concentration camp, but there may be some restrictions. We are not giving them a Bangladeshi passport or ID card,” said HT Imam, adding that there would be about 40 to 50 armed police encamped there.
British and Chinese engineers are preparing the island to receive the refugees before the onset of monsoon rains, which could bring disastrous flooding to ramshackle camps further south that now teem with about one million Rohingya. The rains could start as early as late April.
Hasina’s advisor, Imam, said selecting Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar to move to the island could be decided by lottery or on a volunteer basis.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said: “We would emphasise that any relocation plan involving refugees would need to be based on and implemented through voluntary and informed decisions.”
Humanitarian agencies criticised the plan to bring Rohingya to the island when it was first proposed in 2015. Aid workers said they remained seriously concerned that the silt island is vulnerable to frequent cyclones and cannot sustain livelihoods for thousands of people. But work on the project has accelerated recently, according to architectural plans and two letters from the Bangladesh navy to local government officials and contractors seen by Reuters.
A year ago there were no roads, buildings or people on Bhasan Char, which means “floating island”. On February 14, hundreds of labourers were seen carrying bricks and sand from ships on its northwest shore. Satellite images now show roads and a helipad. The plans show metal-roofed, brick buildings raised on pylons and fitted with solar panels. There will be 1 440 blocks, each housing 16 families.
Floating Island, which emerged from the silt only about 20 years ago, is about 30km from the mainland. Flat and shape-shifting, it regularly floods during June to September. Pirates roam the nearby waters to kidnap fishermen for ransom, residents of nearby islands say.
Chinese construction company Sinohydro, which built China’s Three Gorges Dam, is working on a 13km flood-defence embankment. HR Wallingford, a British engineering and environmental hydraulics consultancy, is advising on coastal stabilisation and flood protection measures, it said.
Omar Waraich, deputy South Asia director of Amnesty International, said “no one in the humanitarian community we spoke to thought this was a good idea. This is a silt island that only emerged into view recently”.
Residents of nearby Sandwip island, which is larger, say monsoon storms regularly kill people, destroy homes and cut contact with the mainland.
However, a senior member of the prime minister’s staff, director general Kabir Bin Anwar, said humanitarian organisations critical of the plan were “wrong because they don’t understand the topography” of Bangladesh. The government was building cyclone shelters and there were salt-tolerant paddies. People living there could fish or graze cows and buffalo.
But many Rohingya don’t want to move there. Jahid Hussain said he would not risk his life by living on Bhasan Char.
They can only leave to go home or to another country.