Rohingya women and children lie and sleep by a road at Ukhiya in Teknaf of Cox’s Bazar on Sunday after they crossed the border from Myanmar to Bangladesh. — Sanaul Haque
The government on Sunday started the process of mandatory registration of the Rohingyas who entered Bangladesh recently fleeing persecution in Myanmar and gathering them at an under-construction camp on 2,000 acres of land at Balukhali near Kutupalang of Ukhia in Cox’s Bazar.
Myanmar on Sunday rebuffed a ceasefire declared by Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army to enable the delivery of aid to thousands of displaced people in the violence-rocked state of Rakhine, declaring simply that it did not negotiate with terrorists, Reuters reported.
ARSA’s declaration drew no formal response from the military or the government of Buddhist-majority Myanmar. However, the spokesman for Myanmar’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, said on Twitter: ‘We have no policy to negotiate with terrorists.’
Attacks by insurgents on police posts and an army base on August 25 prompted a military counter-offensive that triggered an exodus of Rohingya to Bangladesh, adding to the hundreds of thousands already there from previous spasms of conflict.
About 2,94,000 Rohingyas entered Bangladesh after the eruption of violence in Rakhine state on August 25, said UN refugee agency UNHCR on Sunday. Bangladesh officials said that with the new arrivals total number of old and new Rohingyas crossed 7 lakh.
Border Guard Bangladesh and foreign ministry officials estimated that another 1,00,000 persecuted Rohingyas were waiting along the border for scope to enter Bangladesh.
An UN estimations said the number of killed in the violence would be 1,000.
Against such backdrops, Bangladesh initiated the move for mandatory registration of Rohingya entrants.
‘The UNHRC and IOM will be engaged in the process of the registration so that it will be accredited internationally how many refugees have entered Bangladesh,’ home minister Asaduzzaman Khan said at a briefing after presiding over a meeting at the ministry on Rohingya crisis.
He said that without the registration cards, they [newly arrived Rohingyas] would not be allowed to avail bus, water transports and even planes. The inspector general of police would take measures to this end, he added.
The home minister said that the proposed camp would be fenced and remain guarded for repatriation of the Rohingyas.
The home ministry formed a Rohingya Cell to extensively monitor the
overall situation and the law and order in the bordering areas as the Cox’s Bazar district administration began building the camp and opened a relief coordination centre in the beach town to distribute the assistance in coordinated ways.
President M Abdul Hamid on Sunday sought Organisation of Islamic Cooperation members’ intervention to protect Myanmar’s ethnic minority Rohingya Muslims.
He made the call while addressing the opening ceremony of the First Summit on Science and Technology of the OIC at the Palace of Independence in of Kazakhstan’s capital Astana.
Foreign minister AH Mahmood Ali briefed diplomats in Dhaka placing seven-point proposal for Myanmar, including immediately stopping violence in Rakhine State, ensuring protection of civilians irrespective of ethnicity and religion creating safe zones inside Myanmar, engaging with Bangladesh for repatriation of all Myanmar nationals living here through international verification and taking immediate measures for implementation of the recommendations made by the Kofi Annan-led commission.
‘The international community is saying it is a genocide. We also say it is a genocide,’ Mahmood Ali told reporters after briefing diplomats.
The government on Sunday started mandatory registration of Rohingyas who sought refuge in Bangladesh fleeing persecution in Myanmar to save life.
It also demarcated 2,000 acres of land near Kutupalang in Cox’s Bazar to gather the entire newcomer Rohingyas in the fenced and guarded camp for their repatriation in future.
The Department of Immigration and Passport will provide the technical support with Border Guard Bangladesh providing manpower to prepare the biometric registration and to provide ‘registration slip’ to get all types of supports provided by the government and the international agencies, according to the home ministry decision made on Sunday.
The home minister said that the registration was made ‘mandatory’ so that Rohingyas could not be mixed up with the Bangladeshis.
He said that 2,000 acres of lands were already demarcated and it would be fenced and guarded to protect the new arrival Rohingyas, mostly children and women.
Officials said at the briefing that the new cam would be divided into seven blocks and seven deputy secretaries, one for each block, were posted to the cap on Sunday. Cox’s Bazar deputy commissioner would supervise the work at the camp.
The minister said that nearly 3,00,000 Rohingyas had entered Bangladesh after August 25.
Rohingyas who have entered Bangladesh are living here and there making makeshift shelters beside roads and highways, cutting hills and forests in bordering areas in Cox’s Bazar and Bandarban amid run out of food, water supplies and insufficient relief and medical services.
Cox’s Bazar additional district magistrate Khaled Mahmud, also the focal person on Rohingya issue, said that they started gathering Rohingyas at the under-construction camp from different areas.
‘We started to build camps and already erected 60 shelters, each having capacity to house 150 people,’ he said at about 5:30pm.
Khaled said that they would concentrate all new entrants at the camp so that they could not mingle with Bangladeshis.
He said that biometric registration of new coming Rohingays would begin at seventeen points today.
International Organisation for Migration sources said that of the new arrivals about 146,000 took shelters at Balukhali,Kutupalang Ledha and Shamlapur makeshift camps and Kutupalang and Nayapara refugee camps.
About 58,000 took shelters at spontaneous shelters at Moinar Ghona, Thangkhali, Unchiprang and Hakimpara of Cox’s Bazar and 96,000 at places of host communities at Teknaf and Ukhia.
Local people said that most of these new entrants were living in inhuman condition without food and water and almost depending on only a little dry food distributed by aid agencies and local people.
Khaled Mahmud said that they opened a relief coordination centre in the beach town for proper coordination of the distribution the assistance.
District administration began distribution of relief materials among Rohingyas provide by Turkey and those of Malaysia were yet to reach Cox’s Bazar till Sunday afternoon.
At least three Rohingyas were killed and as many were injured in three different landmine explosions in Myanmar opposite to Naikkhyangchari upazila in Bangladesh, alleged Rohingays.
New Age correspondent in Cox’s Bazar reported that three youths, whose identities could not be established immediately, were killed at mine blast in Maynmar opposite of Tumbroo point, said a Border Guard Bangladesh official.
Border guard battalion-34 commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Manzurul Hassan Khan said that he heard from one Nurul Islam, who was also injured in the blast, that three were killed in mine explosion Saturday night.
Border guard officials said that two more youths were also injured in two mine blasts in Myanmar opposite to Reju Amtoli of Naikkhyangchari. All three injured was admitted to Medicine Sans Frontier clinic set up at Kutupalang in Cox’s Bazar.
Another landmine victim Hamida Begum, 55, died at Chittagong Medical College and Hospital Saturday afternoon, the hospital sources said.
She received injuries on September 4 while fleeing to Bangladesh, they said.
Seven more Rohingyas, including a woman and two teenage girls, who crossed border with bullet-wounds, were admitted to Chittagong Medical College Hospital between Saturday night and Sunday morning, said hospitals police outpost sub-inspector Zahirul Islam.
With the seven, the number of injured Rohingyas, many with bullet injuries, at the hospital stood at 80.
Prime minister Sheikh Hasina would visit Rohingya refugee camps at Kutupalang on Tuesday, said prime minister’s press secretary Ihsanul Karim.
Source: New Age