Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have been displaced since 2017
Credit: Zik Maulana/AP
Bangladeshi naval officers beat Rohingya refugees, including children, with sticks and tree branches after they protested against their detention on the desolate island of Bhasan Char in the Bay of Bengal, Human Rights Watch has alleged.
According to reports received by the human rights organisation, the refugees were punished for going on hunger strike last month to demand reunification with their families in the sprawling refugee camps near the Bangladeshi coastal town of Cox’s Bazar. The authorities have denied the accusations.
The alleged beatings took place as the Bangladeshi government seeks to revive a controversial plan to relocate thousands of Rohingya refugees out of the overcrowded camps and onto the remote and muddy silt islet.
Small groups of Rohingya were forced to move there earlier this year after being caught adrift at sea while trying to escape Bangladesh, where more than 700,000 took refuge in 2017 after fleeing ethnic cleansing in their native Myanmar.
Refugees fled into Bangladesh during an ethnic cleansing campaign
Credit: Munir Uz Zaman/AFP
Aid agencies and rights groups have long compared the island, which only emerged from the sea about two decades ago, to a prison with limited health and education facilities. They warn that it offers inadequate protection from the cyclones that regularly hit the region.
“In a darkly ironic attempt to portray Bhasan Char as a safe location, Bangladesh authorities beat Rohingya refugees, including children, who were protesting their detention and begging to return to their families in Cox’s Bazar,” said Brad Adams, HRW’s Asia director.
“The real way to show Bhasan Char is secure and habitable would be to allow United Nations experts to conduct an independent assessment of the island and to ensure that any relocation there is voluntary.”
Human Rights Watch interviewed eight of the refugees who went on the hunger strike, and examined photos showing the injuries sustained during the beatings.
“Navy personnel used tree branches and black rubber sticks to beat us,” one refugee said. “They beat the protesting women and men, and even the children who were standing with their mothers.”
Many refugees have no home to return to after the military torched villages in Rakhine State
Credit: AFP
The refugees stopped eating just days after the government arranged for some of their family and community leaders to visit them on Bhasan Char but would not allow them to stay together.
In video accounts received and analysed by Human Rights Watch, one Rohingya woman on hunger strike said: “We don’t want food, what we want is to go back to our families.… It’s better to die than to live here.”
Members of the visiting delegation claimed they were concerned about conditions on the island, including inadequate medical facilities and the lack of opportunity to make a living there.
The rights group has also raised concerns that the Bangladeshi government, which has the stated aim of relocating about 100,000 refugees to Bhasan Char, has bypassed the necessary United Nations clearances to go ahead with its plan.
The Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR), the media agency of the armed forces and the ministry of defense, called the HRW report “unrealistic, untrue, confusing and a falsehood.”
“The Bangladesh Navy has been working to ensure a smooth life for the forcefully displaced people of Myanmar in Bhashan Char. Through coordination with other forces, the navy has been ensuring safety of these forcefully displaced people,” the ISPR said, reported Radio Free Agency.
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