Rohingya arrested marking Eid

Cox’s Bazar – Bangladesh police detained at least 450 Rohingya refugees as they celebrated the Muslim festival of Eid on a popular beach, officials said yesterday.

Around 920 000 mostly Muslim Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are banned from leaving barbed-wire camps in the southeast where they have been stuck for years. Most fled into Bangladesh after a military offensive in neighbouring Myanmar in 2017 that the US designated in March as genocide.

In recent months, they say they have faced increased hardship in the camps with Bangladeshi authorities bulldozing about 3 000 of their shops and dozens of private community-run schools.

Police spokesperson Rafiqul Islam said officers carried out raids in the town of Cox’s Bazar late on Wednesday on the second day of the Eid holidays.

They “detained more than 450 Rohingya” at one of the largest beaches in the world, he added.

Islam said the raids were part of “security measures” in Cox’s Bazar, the country’s largest resort district which attracts millions of tourists during holiday seasons, including Eid al-Fitr. “Rohingyas are involved in various crimes. It is unsafe for our tourists,” he said.

Several of those detained said they went to the beach for Eid festivities.

The camps have seen an increase in violence blamed on the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, an insurgent group fighting the Myanmar military but also thought to be behind a wave of murders and drug smuggling.