Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh: The Rohingya Resistance Committee (RRC) held a meeting about Rohingya refugees on April 15 at Cox’s Bazaar town, according to sources.
At a Press Conference they said “We don’t want more Rohingya people in our country (Bangladesh) and we don’t want to settle Rohingya refugees on our land,” said a member of the committee.
The committee members demanded that the government solve the Rohingya problem and gave a deadline of April 30 to the government or else they will start demonstrations.
According to a local journalist Hamidul Haque of Ukhiya, Rohingya people are going abroad in their own interest. Over 400,000 Rohingya people live along the border area.
A Rohingya Refugee Committee member from Kutupalong makeshift camp said, “We are afraid of arrests, if RRC Committee members start demonstrations again against Rohingya people. We can’t go outside the camp to work. It will be very harmful for us.”
Many unregistered refugees are facing starvation in the Kutupalong makeshift camp since January 2010 and many have died of hunger, he said.
Aid agencies in Bangladesh have warned that thousands of unregistered Burmese refugees are facing starvation because of the government’s move to drive them out of the country. The refugees, from a Burmese minority community called Rohingya, complain that they are the victims of a crackdown and that hundreds have been arrested and forced back over the border against their will, according to the BBC's Mark Dummett’s report from south-east Bangladesh near the Burmese border.
Foreign secretary Mohamed Mijarul Quaye told journalists at press briefing that Bangladesh has rejected the regional coordinator of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees recently suggested that the government should initiate such new registration for Burmese nationals living outside designated camp in Cox’s Bazar on April 10.
"We have categorically informed him (the regional coordinator) that this is not possible. We do not want to discuss about the rest of the Myanmar nationals living elsewhere in Bangladesh illegally. They must go back to their homeland," said the secretary, Quaye told reporters at a press briefing at the foreign ministry.
He said Bangladesh was ready to work with the United Nations on giving access and protection to 28,000 Rohingya refugees in two camps-the Nowapara and Kutupalong.
The secretary's comment comes in the wake of a campaign in the international media about alleged repression of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. Some western diplomats and legislators recently visited Cox's Bazar to witness the poor living conditions of the Rohingya people. The government has much international pressure to recognise thousands of illegal Myanmar nationals in Bangladesh as refugees. But Dhaka has been resisting that pressure saying that such a move would open a floodgate of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar's Rakhain (Arakan state).
Quaye, therefore criticised some international NGOs and media for presenting "untrue" stories about the Rohingya refugees. "We have not dumped them in concentration camps." "But that is not due to our weakness."
Recognition as refugees would thus entail a government obligation to provide them shelter, protection, food, health services and other needs.
The local administration in Cox's Bazar says that most of the repatriated Rohingya have re-entered Bangladesh illegally due to a lack of system which oppressed them to leave from their homeland.
