Police block BNP relief convoy for Rohingya refugees

BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir has said that police blocked their relief convoy for Rohingya refugees at Ukhia in Cox’s Bazar.

He said those in a discussion at Dhaka Wednesday afternoon.

He said the party’s relief team led by Mirza Abbas was stopped with their 20 relief trucks by authorities while on the way to Ukhia.

“Police are also surrounding our offices in Cox’s Bazar. Our top leaders are confined to the office rooms,” Fakhrul told the discussion held at the Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh.

Earlier, the BNP convoy was headed to the refugees in Cox’s Bazar with 20 trucks of relief for Rohingya refugees.

“The government claims it is with Rohingyas but this incident proves their real intention,” Fakhrul said.

He also alleged that if the government really supported Rohingya refugees they would have never done this.

Some 370,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar and entered Bangladesh since an upsurge in violence late last month, the United Nations said Tuesday.

It attributed the overnight jump from Monday’s figure of 313,000 to the large numbers now moving off the roadside and into informal camps, where they can be counted more easily.

Attacks by Rohingya militants on Myanmar security forces in Rakhine on August 25 sparked harsh military reprisals and an exodus across the border to southeast Bangladesh.

The Muslim Rohingya minority community has long been subjected to discrimination in mostly Buddhist Myanmar, which denies them citizenship.

Refugee camps and makeshift settlements in Bangladesh near the border with Myanmar already hosted at least 300,000 Rohingya before the latest upsurge in violence, and are now completely overwhelmed.

That has left tens of thousands of new arrivals with nowhere to shelter from the monsoon rains.

Source: The Daily Ittefaq