Category Archives: Bangladesh

Rohingya crisis: plight of Myanmar’s displaced people explained in 30 seconds

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One million Rohingya remain in Bangladesh refugee camps and the persecuted group has little hope of returning to Myanmar

It has been five years since Myanmar’s military launched a campaign of massacres that killed about 7,000 Rohingya in a single month and compelled 700,000 to flee for the Bangladeshi border.

Since the first major military operation against the Rohingya minority in 1978, which forced out 200,000, the Rohingya have been collectively stripped of their citizenship and targeted by increasing violence and discrimination that culminated in the “clearance operations” that began on 25 August 2017. Those operations were years in the planning, according to military documents uncovered by the Commission for International Justice and Accountability and sent to the international criminal court.

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Uprooted by partition: ‘I feel I don’t belong in England. I’m a very proud Punjabi’

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Impact of ‘traumatic period’ still lingers with those now based in UK – and their families – 75 years on

After living in Britain for nearly half a century, Pabitra Ghosh is still gripped by a rootlessness borne after being displaced from modern-day Bangladesh as a child.

When a communal riot broke out in 1950, Ghosh, then five, fled with his family across the newly carved Indian border from East Pakistan. The train journey was both “bedlam” and “traumatic” as they abandoned their home to start afresh in Kolkata.

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Third member of Cardiff family dies from ‘poisoning’ in Bangladesh

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Death of Samira Islam, 20, follows deaths of Rafiqul, 51, and Mahiqul, 16, during holiday

A woman has become the latest family member of a British family of five on holiday in Bangladesh to die from a suspected poisoning.

Samira Islam, 20, died on Friday after she was discovered unconscious in a locked room by police officers on 26 July. Her father, Rafiqul Islam, 51, a taxi driver, and his 16-year-old son, Mahiqul, also died in the rented flat in the eastern city of Sylhet.

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Shock in Cardiff after ‘poisoning’ of father and son in Bangladesh

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Rafiqul Islam, 51, and Mahiqul, 16, found dead with three unconscious relatives while on two-month visit

Police investigating the apparent poisoning of a British family of five on holiday in Bangladesh, which killed a father and son, are hoping the survivors could hold the key to what happened.

Rafiqul Islam, 51, a taxi driver from Cardiff, and his son, 16-year-old Mahiqul, along with three other members of their family, were discovered unconscious in a locked room by police officers on Tuesday.

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Bangladesh to hold talks with IMF after applying for bailout

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Dhaka is understood to be seeking $4.5bn rescue package after being hit by high import costs and falling exports

Bangladesh is to hold talks with the International Monetary Fund after applying for a bailout to prevent the country running out of cash.

The government in Dhaka – the third in south Asia to seek a financial rescue package from the IMF after Pakistan and Sri Lanka – is understood to want $4.5bn (£3.7bn) after it was hit hard by high import prices, especially for gas, and a fall in exports as the global economy slowed down.

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Genocide case against Myanmar over Rohingya atrocities cleared to proceed

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UN’s international court of justice rejects arguments advanced by military junta over crackdowns against Muslim minority group

The United Nations’ highest court has rejected Myanmar’s attempts to halt a case accusing it of genocide against the country’s Rohingya minority, paving the way for evidence of atrocities to be heard.

The international court of justice rejected all preliminary objections raised by Myanmar, which is now ruled by a military junta, at a hearing on Friday.

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At least 59 dead and millions stranded as floods devastate India and Bangladesh

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Lightning kills 21 and millions of homes submerged while armed forces asked to help amid continuing storms

At least 59 people died as floods cut a swatch across north-eastern India and Bangladesh, leaving millions of homes underwater, authorities said on Saturday.

In India’s Assam state, 18 people died in the floods or landslides and 2 million others had seen their homes submerged in flood waters since Thursday, the state disaster management agency said.

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BBC to pay £30,000 to Bangladeshi Labour councillor for identity mix-up

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Liza Begum said confusion with Apsana Begum who was acquitted of fraud charges ‘reflects notion all people of colour look the same’

The BBC has agreed to pay £30,000 in damages to a British Bangladeshi Labour councillor after it mixed her up with Apsana Begum in a news item about the MP facing housing fraud charges.

Pictures of Liza Begum at an event to launch Labour’s 2019 race and faith manifesto were broadcast on BBC London News during an exchange on 29 October 2020, in which the BBC London political correspondent said: “This is Apsana Begum … she faces three charges of dishonesty.”

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At least 49 killed and hundreds injured in Bangladesh depot fire

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Huge blaze breaks out at container storage facility 40km from country’s main sea port, Chittagong, with toll expected to rise further

At least 49 people died and hundreds have been injured after a fire tore through a shipping container depot in Bangladesh, sparking a huge chemical explosion that engulfed many of those who had rushed to the scene to help. The death toll is expected to rise.

More than 300 people were injured in the incident, many of whom sustained life-threatening burns, and many bodies remain unrecovered as the fire continued to blaze for a second night in Sitakunda, near the busy southern port of Chittagong.

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Dozens dead, millions stranded as floods ravage Bangladesh and India

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Rains inundate thousands of villages and trigger landslides in north-east Bangladesh’s worst flooding in nearly two decades

Heavy rains have caused widespread flooding in parts of Bangladesh and India, leaving millions stranded and at least 57 dead, officials say.

In Bangladesh, about 2 million people have been marooned by the worst floods in the country’s north-east for nearly two decades.

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UK Foreign Office rushed £4.2bn of aid cuts, official audit finds

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Support slashed despite warnings about impact, with offices told not to discuss plans with local partners, says National Audit Office report

The British government forced through £4.2bn in aid cuts so quickly it had little time to plan the impact they would have, or consult partners, according to an official audit.

The National Audit Office (NAO) said bilateral spending – aid given directly to another government – faced some of the harshest cuts by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) – 53% compared with less than a third of the overall aid budget – because of political and legal commitments to multilateral spending.

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Revealed: migrant workers in Qatar forced to pay billions in recruitment fees

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Guardian investigation finds labourers – including those on World Cup-related projects – were left with huge debts

Low-wage migrant workers have been forced to pay billions of dollars in recruitment fees to secure their jobs in World Cup host nation Qatar over the past decade, a Guardian investigation has found.

Bangladeshi men migrating to Qatar are likely to have paid about $1.5bn (£1.14bn) in fees, and possibly as high as $2bn, between 2011 and 2020. Nepali men are estimated to have paid around $320m, and possibly more than $400m, in the four years between mid-2015 to mid-2019.

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Rohingya refugees welcome US decision to call Myanmar atrocities a genocide

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Refugees ‘very happy’ with declaration, while experts say ‘concrete steps’ must follow

Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh have welcomed the announcement by the US that it considers the violent repression of their largely Muslim ethnic group in Myanmar a genocide.

“We are very happy on the declaration of the genocide; many many thanks,” said 60-year-old Sala Uddin, who lives at Kutupalong camp, one of the many in Cox’s Bazar district that are now home to about 1 million Rohingya.

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‘Is the world listening?’: the poets challenging Myanmar’s military

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Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and beyond are using poetry to come to terms with atrocities – and as a form of resistance

It has now been a year since the military coup, and the breeze of democracy has become a dead wind in Myanmar. People breathe the air of fear and pass nights of rage and despair as men and women are shot or burnt alive at the hands of the Myanmar military. Villagers leave their loved ones at home and take refuge in the forest. Once-vibrant city streets have become rows of haunted houses. The whole country is trapped in a shadowland.

As Rohingya refugees, we are all too familiar with the military’s capacity for violence and destruction. Over the past year, Rohingya people have watched with terror and anguish as the same military forces that perpetrated genocide against us now unleash their atrocities across the country.

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Port in a storm: the trailblazing town welcoming climate refugees in Bangladesh

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The river town of Mongla is leading the way in a project to resettle people in a region decimated by extreme weather

By the time the rising sun breaks through the morning mist over the Mongla River, the rhythmic chug of motors strapped to wooden canoes is already audible as thousands of workers are hurriedly ferried across the waterway.

They jump on to the small landing dock, pick up a potato-stuffed shingara pastry for pennies and rush towards the factories in Mongla’s export processing zone (EPZ), which has transformed the small town into an employment hub in a part of Bangladesh ravaged by the climate crisis.

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‘We live and die by it’: climate crisis threatens Bangladesh’s Sundarbans

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Villagers rely more on the forest’s resources, threatening its ecosystem – and leaving them more vulnerable to cyclones

As he steps out of the mosque on the banks of the Kholpetua River, Mohammed Sabud Ali looks out at a view he has seen several times a day for most of his life. But never before has the sprawling Sundarbans mangrove forest felt so important to him.

The vast Sundarbans has always protected Bangladeshi coastal communities from the violent cyclones that regularly crash in from the Bay of Bengal, and they have always harvested its resources. But now, as the climate crisis encroaches, people are becoming even more dependent on the forest.

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Fire sweeps through Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh – video

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A fire swept through a Rohingya refugee camp in south-eastern Bangladesh on Sunday, destroying hundreds of homes, according to officials and witnesses, though there were no immediate reports of casualties.

The blaze hit Camp 16 in Cox’s Bazar, a border district home to more than a million Rohingya refugees, most of whom fled a military-led crackdown in Myanmar in 2017.

Mohammed Shamsud Douza, a Bangladeshi government official in charge of refugees, said emergency workers had brought the fire under control. The cause of the blaze has not been established, he added

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Fire sweeps through Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, leaving thousands homeless

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About 1,200 homes destroyed by blaze in area that is home to nearly a million people who fled military crackdown in Myanmar

Thousands of people have been left homeless after a fire gutted parts of a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, police say.

About 850,000 of the persecuted Muslim minority – many of whom escaped a 2017 military crackdown in Myanmar that UN investigators concluded was executed with “genocidal intent” – live in a network of camps in Bangladesh’s border district of Cox’s Bazar.

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Thousands of Rohingya shops demolished in Bangladesh, leaving refugees desperate

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Bangladesh praised for taking in nearly a million Rohingya refugees, but destruction of shops that serve communities has attracted criticism

Bangladesh authorities have bulldozed more than 3,000 Rohingya-run shops since last month, a government official confirmed on Tuesday, as struggling refugee families voiced their dismay at the demolitions.

About 850,000 members of the stateless Muslim minority are packed into overcrowded displacement camps in Bangladesh, most having fled neighbouring Myanmar after a 2017 military clampdown that prompted an international genocide investigation.

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‘Our house was gone, it was sea and sand’: life on the vanishing coasts – in pictures

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Coastal communities in Mexico, Bangladesh and Somalia are struggling to adapt to the climate crisis. Many people have already lost livelihoods and homes to rising waters

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