Reuters carries following news report :
Bangladesh is
racing to turn an uninhabited and muddy Bay of Bengal island into home for
100,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled a military crackdown in Myanmar, amid
conflicting signals from top Bangladeshi officials about whether the refugees
would end up being stranded there.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said on
Monday that putting Rohingya on the low-lying island would be a “temporary
arrangement” to ease congestion at the camps in Cox’s Bazar, refuge for nearly
700,000 who have crossed from the north of Myanmar’s Rakhine state since the
end of August last year.
However, one of her advisers told Reuters that,
once there, they would only be able to leave the island if they wanted to go
back to Myanmar or were selected for asylum by a third country.
“It’s not a concentration camp, but there may be
some restrictions. We are not giving them a Bangladeshi passport or ID card,”
said H.T. Imam, adding that the island would have a police encampment with
40-50 armed personnel.
British and Chinese engineers are helping prepare the
island to receive refugees before the onset of monsoon rains, which could bring
disastrous flooding to ramshackle camps further south that now teem with about
1 million Rohingya. The rains could start as early as late April.
Hasina’s adviser, Imam, said the question of
selecting Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar to move to the island was not finalised, but
it could be decided by lottery or on a volunteer-basis.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
said in a statement:
“We would
emphasise that any relocation plan involving refugees would need to be based on
and implemented through voluntary and informed decisions.”
FRENETIC CONSTRUCTION
Humanitarian agencies criticised the plan to bring
Rohingya to the island when it was first proposed in 2015. Aid workers who
spoke to Reuters said they remain seriously concerned that the silt island is vulnerable to frequent cyclones and cannot sustain
livelihoods for thousands of people.
But work on the project has accelerated in recent
months, according to architectural plans and two letters from the Bangladesh
navy to local government officials and contractors seen by Reuters.
A year ago, when Reuters journalists visited Bhasan
Char - whose name means “ FLOATING ISLAND ”
- there were no roads, buildings or people.
Returning
on Feb. 14, they found hundreds of labourers carrying bricks and sand from
ships on its muddy northwest shore. Satellite images now show roads and what
appears to be a helipad.
May be what I suggested in my following blogs , some 2
years ago in jest , could well turn out to be the most practical / economical solution
to the “ economic migrant “ and “ political refugee “ problem “ of the World , which
will continue to escalate ( geometric progression ? ), over the coming decades due
to rising inequality among the rich and the poor of the World
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