Thousands of Muslim refugees from Myanmar face beatings and forced repatriation to their homeland by authorities in Bangladesh, an international medical group said yesterday.
About a quarter-million ethnic Rohingyas have fled from Myanmar, saying they face often brutal treatment by the ruling military regime.
“Refugees have reported to us that they have received beatings in the host community by the police,” said Paul Critchley, who heads Medecins sans Frontieres in Bangladesh. “Our patients have told us in some cases they have been handed over to the border forces of Bangladesh, beaten and forced to swim the river back toward Myanmar.”
Bangladesh authorities have dismissed earlier charges of a crackdown. Sakhawat Hossain, a senior police official, said on Tuesday that authorities were only conducting normal operations to detain foreigners who illegally entered the country.
Hossain said 500 Myanmar citizens had been detained between mid-November and Feb. 15.
The majority of Rohingya in Bangladesh reside in the overcrowded Cox’s Bazaar area bordering Myanmar. Since October, more than 6,000 people have arrived at a makeshift camp.
Medecins sans Frontieres says that 28,000 refugees live in official camps under UN supervision and are recognized as refugees by Bangladesh. But an estimated 220,000 others have no refugee status.
“They could be forced out at any moment, so they’re basically holding their families together. You have a space of slightly larger than a bathroom that has six or seven people and attached to it is another bathroom, so you have two families living in this really crammed condition,” another agency staffer, Vanessa Van Schoor said.
A report released earlier this week from the Rohingya advocacy group The Arakan Project also said a crackdown has been under way since the beginning of the year.
“Hunger is spreading rapidly among the already malnourished population in the makeshift camp and a grave humanitarian crisis is looming,” project director Chris Lewa said.
The plight the Rohingyas gained international attention last year after allegations that more than 1,200 of them were detained by Thai authorities and later sent adrift at sea on boats with little food or water. Hundreds were believed to have drowned.
Many Rohingyas have taken to the seas in search of better jobs.
The destination for many is Malaysia, just across the border from southern Thailand.
The Rohingyas’ status in Myanmar is particularly precarious because they do not hold full citizenship.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of