Almost 65,000 Rohingya have entered Bangladesh since late 2023, govt says

[ad_1] Almost 65,000 Rohingya have crossed into southeastern Bangladesh since late final yr amid unrest and violence in Rakhine, their house state in neighboring Myanmar, in accordance with newly up to date data from Bangladeshi officers.

The brand new arrivals, documented from November 2023 to December 2024, add to an enormous inhabitants of Rohingya refugees, who've been sheltering at sprawling camps and settlements in Cox’s Bazar district for no less than seven years.

Bangladeshi authorities say they're set to gather biometric information from the newcomers, who quantity about 64,700 folks, or some 17,480 households.

“The federal government has principally agreed to challenge biometric identification for the newly arrived Rohingyas. It discovered the quantity to be round 60,000 after [a] head rely,” Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, commissioner of the Refugee Aid and Repatriation Fee (RRRC) Workplace, informed BenarNews on Thursday.

The Rohingya entered Bangladesh regardless of declarations from the earlier authorities that it wouldn’t permit any extra Rohingya into the nation and it had sealed the borders to them.

The earlier authorities, led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, fell in August 2024 underneath stress from a student-led rebellion. A transitional authorities has been answerable for Bangladesh since then.

Nonetheless, particulars haven't but been launched in regards to the biometric identification system, which is ready to start out subsequent month.

Human rights advocates had earlier raised considerations that the biometric particulars of Rohingya refugees – which can embody fingerprints, facial and iris scans, in addition to private information – could be shared with Myanmar’s ruling junta with out their consent or information.

The biometric identification course of would start as quickly as the federal government approves it, in accordance with the United Nations Excessive Commissioner for Refugees, or the UNHCR, which is concerned within the exercise.

“The Biometric Identification Train will not be a registration, however will permit UNHCR to de-duplicate people who had been counted greater than as soon as through the headcount, in addition to exclude already-registered refugees who arrived in 2017 and who could have been counted,” the U.N. company mentioned in a press release despatched to BenarNews.

Rohingya youngsters from the Leda camp in Teknaf, a sub-district of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, goes out in the hunt for work, Dec. 20, 2024. (BenarNews) About 740,000 Rohingya fled from Rakhine following a bloody crackdown in opposition to members of their stateless Muslim minority group in August 2017. They joined different Rohingya who had settled in camps in and round Cox’s Bazar, bringing the entire variety of refugees in southeastern Bangladesh on the time to simply over 1 million.

In June 2021, Human Rights Watch accused UNHCR of “improperly” accumulating and sharing private data from the Rohingya refugees with the Bangladeshi authorities, which shared them with the Myanmar junta.

“The company didn't conduct a full information impression evaluation, as its insurance policies require, and in some instances did not acquire refugees’ knowledgeable consent to share their information with Myanmar, the nation that they had fled,” HRW alleged.

In response, UNHCR mentioned it had adopted correct procedures in its biometric information assortment system.

Rakhine’s deteriorating state of affairs

Bangladeshi authorities worry there could also be a spike of Rohingya refugees fleeing from Rakhine because the state of affairs within the Myanmar state continues to worsen.

“The latest inflow was triggered [by the takeover] of Maungdaw township in Rakhine by the Arakan Military [AA],” the RRRC commissioner mentioned.

There have additionally been incidents of Rohingya villages being razed, forcing residents to take shelter throughout the border, he additionally mentioned.

This month, ethnic minority AA insurgents – that are preventing for self-determination in Rakhine state – mentioned that they had captured a serious navy base within the city of Ann.

The AA’s seize of the bottom was the most recent main setback for the Burmese junta, which seized energy in a February 2021 coup.

Refugee Zahangir Alam informed BenarNews that AA members had been taking many younger Rohingya captive.

“The Arakan Military’s torture [of] Rohingya is extra agonizing than that of Myanmar Military. I used to review at an academic institute there in Maungdaw and needed to flee to avoid wasting myself from their torture. My youthful brother remains to be held hostage within the camp run by the Arakan Military,” Zahangir mentioned.

Refugees who earlier fled violence and persecution in Myanmar mentioned that they had been kidnapped and compelled to battle within the nation’s ongoing civil battle for each the junta and the AA.

With the assistance of a smuggler, also called a “dealer,” Zahangir was in a position to flee to Bangladesh. He's at the moment staying at a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar.

Bangladeshi authorities mentioned smugglers had been serving to Rohingya – in trade for hefty charges – to cross the border areas between southeastern Bangladesh and northwestern Myanmar.

Some refugees claimed they needed to pay smugglers bribes starting from Tk 20,000 (U.S. $166) to Tk 25,000 ($200) to cross the border.

If the state of affairs additional deteriorates, there could also be extra Rohingya fleeing into Bangladesh, overseas ministry official Ferdousi Shariar and overseas affairs adviser Md. Touhid Hossain mentioned.

Amid the unrest in Myanmar, Bangladeshi authorities mentioned they had been intently watching the border areas on the city of Teknaf and Saint Martin’s Island.