Friday, July 20, 2012

BGB seeks Tk 5m from govt to battle Rohingya influx




FE Report

The Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) has sought Tk 5.0 million from the government to continue operations against the influx of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar.

The BGB in a letter to the government last week sought the amount as it ran short of river boats and other equipment to handle the influx of Rohingya people, who fled mayhem in the Rakhine state of Myanmar recently.

The BGB said it pushed back a total of 826 Rohingya refugees since June 11, 2012 in the south-eastern part of Bangladesh.




Home Ministry Joint Secretary Dipak Kanti Pal told the FE that they received a letter from the BGB and forwarded it to the concerned ministry for immediate release of the fund.

Sources said the Rohingya problem first cropped up back in 1978 when a religious fight erupted in Myanmar, when the Bangla-speaking people there started fleeing violence and intruding Bangladesh.

The crisis remerged in June this year when another riot erupted in the same region.

To flee into Bangladesh, the Rohingyas mainly use the waterways in Teknaf and Ukhia, a ministry official said adding that Myanmar shares a 271-kilometre border with Cox's Bazar and Bandarban, 54km with Teknaf upazila alone.

With physiques similar to those of locals, they can mix well with the Bangladeshi community. Unless they disclose their identities, they can hardly be distinguished from others, locals observe.

Bangladesh officially accommodates around 29,000 Rohingya refugees. However, different estimates suggest the number of the Myanmarese minorities living in and around Cox's Bazar ranges between 0.25 and 0.5 million.

The local administration roughly estimates that around 60 thousand now live in these two separate Rohingya settlement areas.

These intruders have also occupied pieces of land by setting up makeshift structures at different places all over the district, even in the beach town. It is not hard to find their settlements also in Chittagong and other hill districts.

The illegal immigrants work mostly as day labourers while some are rickshaw-pullers and lumberjacks and some fish in the nearby rivers and the sea.

The locals' observation is that these settlers are involved in all sorts of crimes.

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