Rohingya camp fire was ‘planned sabotage act’
HEAD OF INQUIRY PANEL SAYS ARSON WAS A DELIBERATE ATTEMPT BY MILITANTS
A FIRE that left thousands of Rohingya Muslims homeless in Bangladesh camps was a “planned act of sabotage”, a panel investigating the blaze said last Sunday (12).
Nearly 2,800 shelters and more than 90 facilities including hospitals and learning centres were destroyed in the fire on March 5, leaving more than 12,000 people without shelter, officials said.
More than one million Rohingya refugees live in tens of thousands of huts made of bamboo and thin plastic sheeting in camps in the border district of Cox’s Bazar, most having fled a military-led crackdown in Myanmar in 2017.
“The fire was a planned act of sabotage,” senior district government official Abu Sufian, head of the seven-member probe committee, told Reuters by phone from Cox’s Bazar.
He said the blaze broke out in several places at the same time, proving it was a planned act, adding it was a deliberate attempt to establish supremacy inside the camps by militant groups. He didn’t name the groups.
“We recommended further investigation by the law-enforcing agency to identify the groups behind the incident,” he said, adding that the report was based on input from 150 eye witnesses.
The panel also recommended the formation of a separate fire service unit for the Rohingya camps. Each block of Rohingya camps needs to be widened to accommodate fire service vehicles and the construction of water cisterns, and the camps should use less flammable materials in shelters, were among the other recommendations.
Fires often break out in the crowded camp with its makeshift structures. A massive blaze in March 2021 killed at least 15 refugees and destroyed more than 10,000 homes.
Last Tuesday (7) the United States announced $26 million in new humanitarian aid for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and elsewhere in the region.
“This new funding allows our humanitarian partners to continue providing life-saving assistance to affected communities on both sides of the Burma Bangladesh border,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said, using the old name for Myanmar.
He said the new money raises to $2.1 billion the total of US aid provided to the Rohingya people since August 2017.
The United Nations said last Tuesday it needs $876 million to meet the humanitarian needs of the Rohingya in Bangladesh, after dwindling donations forced a cut to their food rations.