At least 15 people have been killed and another 400 are missing after a fire tore through Balukhali camp near Cox’s Bazar late on Monday. More than 17,000 shelters were destroyed, leaving 45,000 people displaced. Emergency services, volunteers and Red Cross staff worked for several hours to control the blaze. The camp houses about 124,000 people, although the surrounding area shelters approximately 1 million Rohingya refugees
Continue reading...Category Archives: Bangladesh
Bangladesh: ‘massive’ fire in Rohingya refugee camps forces 20,000 to flee
- 1 million who fled Myanmar live in camps in Cox’s Bazar
- No reports of deaths or injuries so far
At least 20,000 Rohingya have fled a huge blaze engulfing shanty homes at refugee camps in south-eastern Bangladesh, officials said on Monday, in the third fire to hit the settlements in four days.
Nearly 1 million of the Muslim minority from Myanmar live in cramped and squalid conditions at the camps in the Cox’s Bazar district, with many fleeing a military crackdown in their homeland in 2017.
Continue reading...Bangladesh shipbreakers win right to sue UK owners in landmark ruling
Appeal court clears wife to sue company in London over husband’s death while helping to scrap tanker in Chittagong
British shipping companies that sell old vessels to be scrapped cheaply in dangerous, low-paid conditions in Bangladesh, India or Pakistan may now be sued in London for workers’ deaths or injuries.
In the first ruling of its kind by any higher court anywhere in the world, the court of appeal of England and Wales has held that a shipping company in London selling a vessel in south Asia could owe a legal “duty of care” to shipbreaking workers in Bangladesh even where there are multiple third parties involved in the transaction.
Continue reading...Hong Kong activists and plight of the Uighurs: human rights this week in photos
A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Colombia to the Sahara
Continue reading...Revealed: 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar as it gears up for World Cup
Guardian analysis indicates shocking figure likely to be an underestimate, as preparations for 2022 tournament continue
More than 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have died in Qatar since it won the right to host the World Cup 10 years ago, the Guardian can reveal.
The findings, compiled from government sources, mean an average of 12 migrant workers from these five south Asian nations have died each week since the night in December 2010 when the streets of Doha were filled with ecstatic crowds celebrating Qatar’s victory.
Continue reading...‘Fighting for life’: Bangladesh shrimp farmers destitute in wake of cyclone
Natural disaster compounded by the collapse of a lucrative export during the pandemic has thrust people into poverty
This time last year the west coast of Bangladesh was a thriving place for shrimp farmers. It was a decent enough living and there was a healthy export market.
Majnu Sardar, who lives in Koyra upazila (administrative region) in Khulna district, used to earn enough to feed, clothe and educate his family of six. Now they are living in a small mud hut, with a canopy of leaves as a roof, on the banks of the Kapotaksha River after Cyclone Amphan buried his house and land in May.
Continue reading...‘Back empty-handed’: Bangladeshis cut off from jobs abroad face rising poverty
Whole communities supported by overseas work are at risk of extreme poverty after the pandemic forced thousands home
When the pandemic forced Firoza Begum back to Bangladesh after six months trapped in her employer’s house without pay, her husband was so angry she had returned empty-handed that he would not let her move back in to the family home.
All her savings after 14 years working in the Middle East had been spent escaping her abusive employer.
Continue reading...Air pollution will lead to mass migration, say experts after landmark ruling
Call for world leaders to act in wake of French extradition case that turned on environmental concerns
Air pollution does not respect national boundaries and environmental degradation will lead to mass migration in the future, said a leading barrister in the wake of a landmark migration ruling, as experts warned that government action must be taken as a matter of urgency.
Sailesh Mehta, a barrister specialising in environmental cases, said: “The link between migration and environmental degradation is clear. As global warming makes parts of our planet uninhabitable, mass migration will become the norm. Air and water pollution do not respect national boundaries. We can stop a humanitarian and political crisis from becoming an existential one. But our leaders must act now.”
Continue reading...Man saved from deportation after pollution plea in French legal ‘first’
Court says man would face ‘worsening of his respiratory pathology due to air pollution’ in country of origin
A Bangladeshi man with asthma has avoided deportation from France after his lawyer argued that he risked a severe deterioration in his condition, and possibly premature death, due to the dangerous levels of pollution in his homeland.
In a ruling believed to be the first of its kind in France, the appeals court in Bordeaux overturned an expulsion order against the 40-year-old man because he would face “a worsening of his respiratory pathology due to air pollution” in his country of origin.
Continue reading...‘There is no noise’: inside the controversial Bhasan Char refugee camp – a photo essay
Amid concern from charities and NGOs, Bangladesh is relocating Rohinghya refugees to a remote island. One resident describes his new life there
I wanted to come here. No one forced me, and my wife also agreed in a snap.
To be honest, though, I didn’t tell my brother. He lives where I used to live – Kutupalong camp. He is very against this island for some reason. He might have tried to stop me coming if I dared to discuss the topic. So I didn’t. I only told him after I arrived. I was amazed that he didn’t yell at me.
Continue reading...Calls for release of man arrested photographing transfer of Rohingyas
Bangladesh authorities under pressure from rights activists including Bianca Jagger over detention of Abul Karam
Bangladesh authorities are facing calls to release a Rohingya man arrested while photographing the transfer of refugees to a controversial island camp this week.
Abul Kalam, 35, has been held since Monday morning when he was reportedly beaten before being taken to police barracks near the Kutupalong refugee camp, where he has lived since leaving Myanmar as a child refugee in the early 1990s.
Continue reading...Bangladesh moves more Rohingyas to remote island despite rights concerns
Activists say the island of Bhasan Char is not safe and that the refugees are being moved against their will
Bangladesh has begun moving the second group of Rohingya refugees from crammed camps in Cox’s Bazar to a remote island in the Bay of Bengal, in defiance of safety and security concerns from international rights advocates.
Groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have urged the Bangladeshi government to halt the relocation of Rohingya to Bhasan Char, which is hours by boat from the mainland, flood-prone, vulnerable to frequent cyclones and could be completely submerged during a high tide.
Continue reading...‘It’s over for us’: how extreme weather is emptying Bangladesh’s villages
The frequency of natural disasters is making life in rural areas increasingly difficult, pushing inhabitants into city slums
The house Faruk Hossain grew up in has, for the last six months, resisted being claimed by the river, as the rest of the village already has been.
But slowly, as the waters have failed to seep away, he has come to accept that the family house has become uninhabitable. Like other villages nearby, Chakla in Bangladesh’s Satkhira district has not re-emerged from the flooding caused by Super-cyclone Amphan, which battered the south of the country in late May,
Continue reading...Deported to danger and death: Australia returns people to violence and persecution
Asylum seekers forcibly returned to their home countries have faced arrest and threats. Some have died
- Interactive timeline: what happened to every person caught up in Australia’s offshore processing regime
- Revealed: 1,500 people in limbo under Australia’s ‘bizarre and cruel’ refugee deterrence policy
They came for him, as he had said they would. They came for him with knives.
Samad Howladar had spent five years inside Australia’s offshore detention regime, held within the Manus Island detention centre until he was deported, in handcuffs, back to Bangladesh in March 2018.
Continue reading...‘I thought about killing my children’: the desperate Bangladesh garment workers fighting for pay
Workers face destitution after the collapse of fashion retailers – and despite beatings and police crackdowns vow they will protest until they are paid
It was 4.30am when the police charged the hundreds of garment workers sleeping under makeshift shelters and in sleeping bags on the streets of Dhaka, Bangladesh. As blows rained down, the workers fled.
By morning the streets had been cleared of the non-violent protest that more than 700 garment workers had been peacefully staging outside the Dhaka Press Club calling for their unpaid wages as they faced mounting destitution and hunger.
Continue reading...Bangladesh begins moving Rohingya families to remote island
Operation to move 2,500 families begins despite safety concerns and lack of consent from refugees
Bangladesh has begun moving Rohingya families from camps near the Myanmar border to a settlement on a remote island, despite concerns about its safety and a lack of consent from the refugees.
More than 1,600 Rohingya refugees set sail on Friday from Bangladesh’s southern port of Chittagong for the remote island of Bhasan Char in the Bay of Bengal, a naval official said, Reuters reported.
Continue reading...When it comes to a family trauma, who gets to tell the story?
When Fariha Róisín started writing Like a Bird, she thought the traumatic event at its heart was just a dream. She explores the weight of a family secret
In her 1861 account Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs exposed her sexual abuse by her master with lucidity and truth. Yet for more than 100 years, it was accepted academic opinion that Incidents was a novel, written by white abolitionist Lydia Maria Child. It was not until the 1980s that critic Jean Fagan Yellin proved Jacobs to be the true author; Incidents had been autobiographical all along.
In Hollywood, rape narratives are largely penned by men and seen as a motif, because the tension (and tragedy) of the experience creates sympathy, compassion; it formalises emotion. When we see a woman raped and abused on film we absolve ourselves for watching, because we want to understand the ugliness of human atrocity, or so that’s what we say. And when women write about rape, often in literature, its seen as melodramatic, overemotional, too impossible to be true. “Primarily, rape is considered a women’s issue, though this is, of course, hardly the case,” writes poet Moniza Alvi, in the introduction to Feminism, Literature and Rape Narratives, “and perhaps this is partly why it is considered a literary taboo, particularly when conveyed from a female viewpoint.”
Continue reading...Protests grow across Muslim world against French president Emmanuel Macron – video report
Demonstrations are growing across the Muslim world against the French president Emmanuel Macron and his perceived attacks on Islam and the prophet Muhammad.
In Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, about 40,000 people were involved in a demonstration organised by the country’s largest Islamist party, while protests took place in Pakistan, Palestine, Iran and Afghanistan.
French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo republished cartoons of Muhammad in September, before the trial of 14 people accused of involvement in a terrorist attack against the publication’s offices in 2015 for publishing the same caricatures.
Macron has defended the publication, pledged to fight ‘Islamist separatists’ and said his country ‘would not give up cartoons’
Continue reading...Anger towards Emmanuel Macron grows in Muslim world
Protests take place in several countries against French president in aftermath of crackdown
On the front page of a hardline Iranian newspaper, he was the “Demon of Paris”. In the streets of Dhaka he was decried as a leader who “worships Satan”. Outside Baghdad’s French embassy, a likeness of Emmanuel Macron was burned along with France’s flag.
Rage is growing across the Muslim world at the French president and his perceived attacks on Islam and the prophet Muhammad, leading to calls for boycotts of the French products and security warnings for France’s citizens in majority-Muslim states.
Continue reading...Muslim backlash against Macron gathers pace after police raids
Iran calls Paris’s response to teacher’s killing ‘unwise’ amid protests across Muslim world
The backlash against Emmanuel Macron following his insistence that publication of caricatures of the prophet Muhammad is fundamental to freedom of speech has spread, with angry international protests, cyber-attacks against French websites and warnings that the president’s response is “unwise”.
Muslims in France – and elsewhere – are also furious at what they claim is a heavy-handed government clampdown on their communities in the wake of the killing 11 days ago of the high school teacher Samuel Paty.
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