Police hunt man who married refugee despite state’s ban

Bangladesh police were yesterday searching for a man who defied a ban and married a Rohingya refugee woman.

More than half a million Rohingya refugees have fled to Bangladesh since an army operations began on August 25 in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, a process the UN has described as ethnic cleansing.

Shoaib Hossain Jewel, 25, and his bride, Rafiza, 18, have been on the run since marrying last month, said police in Mr Jewel’s hometown of Singair, about 50 kilometres from Dhaka.

“We went to his home at Charigram village to look for him,” said Khandaker Hossain, Singair’s police chief. “But we did not find him there and his parents don’t know where he has gone,” he said.

Dhaka banned marriages between Bangladeshis and Rohingya refugees in 2014 after claims that members of the persecuted community were attempting to gain citizenship through marriage.

Mr Jewel’s father, Babul Hossain, said citizenship was not the motive and defended his son’s marriage to Rafiza.

“If Bangladeshis can marry … people of other religions, what’s wrong in my son’s marriage to a Rohingya?” Mr Hossain said. “He married a Muslim who took shelter in Bangladesh.”

The Dhaka Tribune newspaper said Mr Jewel, a teacher, fell in love with Rafiza after her family fled Myanmar and took refuge at a cleric’s house in Singair. Amid a police crackdown, the family was forced to move to the main refugee camp in the district of Cox’s Bazar – 426km from Singair.

A lovestruck Mr Jewel rushed to Cox’s Bazar, running from one camp to another in search of Rafiza. He finally found her and asked her parents for their daughter’s hand in marriage.

Their wedding in Cox’s Bazar was the first known marriage between a Bangladeshi and a Rohingya since the flare-up, the newspaper reported.

“We are taking preventive actions to ensure there are no marriages between Bangladeshis and Rohingya,” said Cox’s Bazar deputy police chief, Mohammad Rashid.