Top Stories
Full News
B'desh detains 128 refugees fleeing Myanmar
Added At: 2012-06-18 11:33 PM
Last Updated At: 2012-06-19 11:33 PM
ASSOCIATED PRESS
COX'S BAZAR: Bangladeshi officials today intercepted an additional 128 Rohingya refugees fleeing sectarian violence in western Myanmar, and said they would be detained for a while and then sent back home.
Some 2,000 members of the Muslim Rohingya ethnic group have tried to enter Bangladesh after fleeing violence in recent weeks in Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state between Buddhists and Rohingyas that has left dozens of people dead.
But they have all been either turned back or detained. Bangladesh says its resources already are too strained and has refused to accept the Rohingyas despite urgings from the United Nations to grant them refugee status.
The latest group — mostly women and children — arrived today in five boats at an island in the Bay of Bengal near the border with Myanmar, said Lt Col Zahid Hasan, commander of Border Guard Bangladesh.
Authorities planned to provide them food and water, and then send them back home at an unspecified later time, he said.
Abdus Sobhan, 52, who was among the newly arrived refugees, said he and his neighbours from the Maungdaw area of Rakhine state headed for Bangladesh because they feared torture by Myanmar security forces in a crackdown following this month’s violence. The security forces have been rounding up youths in his neighborhood and imposing strict stay-at-home curfews, he said.
“We could not go outside for days, they took our boys away,” he said. “How could we survive if we can’t go outside?”
The unrest — trigged by the rape and murder last month of a Buddhist girl, allegedly by three Muslims, and the June 3 lynching of 10 Muslims in apparent retaliation — stems from long-standing tensions.
Myanmar state media reported over the weekend that, overall, 50 people had been killed in the violence.
Myanmar considers the Rohingya to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and denies them citizenship. Bangladesh says Rohingya have been living in Myanmar for centuries and should be recognised there as citizens.
Also Read
- TMNC chief Gupta threatens poll boycott over demands
- Credit Suisse displaces Morgan Stanley from No.2 spot in Asia
- NC prez proposes Regmi exit for poll environment
- Soldiers get warm welcome in beseiged Mexican town
- MJ's estate mints $600 million since his death
- Indian Army team calls on CoAS Rana
- Bombings in Iraq kill at least 12
- Israel fires back at Syria after gunshots at its troops
- CPN-UML eyes clear majority‚ launches election campaign
- Supreme Court hears petition to halt IPL
Related News
- Suicide bomb attack
- ´Sudan prez siphoned off $9 b to UK´
- Iraq to get cabinet soon
- US troubleshooter hands over proposals to NKorea
- India´s Congress party meets
- China urges talks on Korean situation
- ICoast gives marching order to UN troops
- Maliki to keep security
- US hiker killed in Israel
- $ 11 million Xmas tree
