Bangladesh to build huge camps for Burma's Rohingya refugees

The Bangladeshi government has committed to building thousands of new shelters for Rohingya Muslims who have been displaced from neighbouring Burma.

Around 400,000 Rohingya have crossed the border into neighbouring Bangladesh since a renewed assault by the country’s military in Rakhine state.

The huge number of refugees arriving in such a short period of time means official camps are “bursting at the seams”, according to a spokesperson for the United Nations Refugee Agency.

Many of the new arrivals have been forced to set up makeshift shelters in temporary camps, in cramped and unsanitary positions.

Responding to the influx of refugees, the Bangladeshi government said it will set up 14,000 additional shelters, in Kutupalong, near the border with Burma, according to a report in the country’s Daily Star newspaper.

Each shelter will house up to six families. The site will also include 8,500 temporary toilets and 14 warehouses to store aid and provisions.

However, the government also plans to impose a number of harsh restrictions on the inhabitants of the shelter.

Last week, Bangladeshi Home Affairs Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said inhabitants would be forbidden to leave the camp and also prohibited from travelling across the country by vehicle.

The current crisis in Rakhine State began in late August, when an insurgent Rohingya group attacked a police outpost.

This prompted Burma’s military to launch “clearance operations” against the rebels, setting off a wave of violence that has left hundreds dead, and tens of thousands fleeing to Bangladesh.

The army has been accused of using scored-earth tactics to expel Rohingya from the area. Fire-detection data and satellite imagery shows at least 80 large-scale fires in inhabited areas across northern Rakhine State since 25 August, according to Amnesty International.

Tirana Hassan, Amnesty International’s Crisis Response Director, said: “There is a clear and systematic pattern of abuse here. Security forces surround a village, shoot people fleeing in panic and then torch houses to the ground.

“In legal terms, these are crimes against humanity – systematic attacks and forcible deportation of civilians”

The UN High Commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, has also said the military’s assault was “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing and a cynical ploy to forcibly transfer large numbers of people without possibility of return.”