B’desh to move 15,000 refugees
Pak Shiites rally
COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh, Oct 1, (Agencies): Bangladesh is to move to a camp at least 15,000 Rohingya refugees who have settled in a restive hill district near the border with Myanmar, a local official said Sunday.
Most of the estimated half a million Rohingya who have arrived in southeastern Bangladesh over the last five weeks after fleeing violence in Myanmar are crammed into the camps that have sprung up on government land.
But thousands of the mainly Muslim refugees have settled in the nearby district of Bandarban, part of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, where indigenous tribes waged a separatist insurgency in the 1980s and 1990s.
Bangladesh authorities fear their presence could revive communal tensions between the local Muslim population and the tribal minority, who are mainly Buddhist.
Banik said the government would begin moving them on Monday to “ensure peace in the hill district”.
Meanwhile, the UN migration agency said Friday that more than 60 people are either confirmed dead or missing and presumed dead following the shipwreck of a boat carrying Rohingya Muslims who were fleeing from violence in Myanmar to Bangladesh.
Spokesman Joel Millman of the International Organization for Migration told reporters in Geneva that 23 deaths have been confirmed after eight more bodies were found overnight following an initial count of 15.
Based on interviews that IOM has conducted with survivors, Millman said, “We believe 40 are missing and presumed drowned” on the vessel, which was thought to have been carrying about 80 people.
The agency says more than 500,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since Aug 25, the start of a military crackdown triggered by a coordinated militant assault on 30 police posts and an army base in northern Rakhine state, where many Rohingya live.
Meanwhile, the Oxford University college where Aung San Suu
Kyi studied said Saturday it had taken down a portrait of the Myanmar leader, a decision that follows widespread criticism of her over the Rohingya crisis.
The portrait, which was on display in the main entrance of St Hugh’s College, has been placed in storage and was replaced on Thursday with a new painting gifted by Japanese artist Yoshihiro Takada.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Suu Kyi studied at St Hugh’s, graduating in philosophy, politics and economics in 1967 before completing a masters in politics in 1968. Thousands rally in Pakistan: Thousands of Shiite Muslims have rallied across various parts of Pakistan ahead of tomorrow’s religious festival of Ashura, or “Day of Remembrance”.
The holiest day on the Shiite Muslim calendar is observed each year on the 10th day of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic year, to mourn the 7th century death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of Islam’s Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).
At Saturday’s rally in Islamabad thousands of Shiite Muslims were seen beating their chests with their hands and flagellating themselves with knives attached to chains.
Indian policeman arrested: An Indian policeman has been arrested on suspicion of raping a seven-yearold girl, allegedly while he was drunk, a senior officer said Sunday.
Colleagues raised the alarm after finding the girl naked in the officer’s quarters in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh late on Saturday, local police superintendent Vipin Tada told AFP.
The Press Trust of India news agency said angry locals had tried to attack the local police post in protest. But Tada said the crowd was pacified when they learned the officer had been arrested.
India has a grim record of sexual assaults on minors, with 20,000 cases reported in 2015, according to government data.
Sri Lanka arrests 6: Sri Lankan police said Sunday they have arrested six people in their hunt for a mob led by Buddhist monks who attacked Rohingya refugees last week.
The government of the Buddhistmajority country has accused the monks of behaving like “animals” during Tuesday’s attack on a centre housing Rohingya Muslims including children on the outskirts of Colombo.
“We have identified the monks who led the attack,” an officer involved in the investigation told AFP on condition of anonymity.
“We have deployed three teams to arrest them.”