UKHIA, Bangladesh: Heavy monsoon rain heaped new misery on Sunday on hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohinyga stuck in makeshift camps in Bangladesh after fleeing violence in Myanmar, as authorities started a drive to force them to a new site.
With food and water shortages already making life tough, torrential rain brought back swamp-like conditions to many parts of the border town of Cox’s Bazar which has become a magnet for the Rohingya.
About 7.7 centimetres of rain fell in 24 hours and more is predicted in the next two days, the Bangladesh Weather Department said.
Bangladesh authorities, who have already issued travel restrictions on the Rohingya, launched an operation late on Saturday to get tens of thousands out of roadside camps and hillside shanties into a giant new camp.
The United Nations says 409,000 Rohingyas have now overwhelmed Cox’s Bazar since August 25 when the military in Buddhist-majority Myanmar launched operations in Rakhine state.
As existing camps are already full with 300,000 Rohingya fleeing earlier violence, many of the Rohingya have been forced to live in the open air or under flimsy plastic sheets.
Police toured streets with loudspeakers ordering exhausted families to go to the Balukhali camp in Cox’s Bazar, which is being cleared to build new shelters.
“We are shifting them from the roadsides where many of them have been staying,” Khaled Mahmud, a government spokesman for Cox’s Bazar district said.
Mahmud said gradually all the new Rohingya would be taken to Balukhali to bring order to the chaotic aid operation.
According to the UN, more than half of the refugees are children, and more than 1,100 have arrived alone after trekking mud roads and hills for days.
“That number could rise beyond one million by the end of the year if the influx continues, including about 600,000 children, according to UN agencies,” Mark Pierce, the Bangladesh chief of Save the Children charity, said.
Myanmar’s de-facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi is to give a nationally televised speech on the Rohingya case on Tuesday.
The Nobel peace laureate, much criticised around the world for not condemning the violence against the Rohingya, must address the global outrage while not angering the military, which maintains huge power.
General Min Aung Hlaing, Myanmar’s globe-trotting army chief, called for a “united” stance in handling the crisis but gave no sign of concessions.
UN chief Antonio Guterres has said that Suu Kyi has one “last chance” to stop the refugee crisis in the west of the country.
“I would expect that the leader of the country would be able to contain it, and would be able to reverse the situation,” the UN secretary-general told the British broadcaster BBC.
“She has a chance, she has a last chance, in my opinion, to do so,” he said. — Agencies
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