Bangladesh Government has its own dignity to care Human rights ,specially government has successful result with Rohingya, but in last An international rights group has accused Bangladesh of “violating human rights” in its crackdown on thousands of unregistered Burmese refugees, many of whom have lived in the country for decades.

In a report released on Tuesday, The Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), said that tens of thousands of Rohingya, a Burmese Muslim ethnic group, had been forced into makeshift camps, facing starvation.

“It is unconscionable to leave this stateless and starving,” said Richard Sollom, the PHR director of research and investigations.

“Haiti after the recent earthquake had an acute child malnutrition rate of six percent, in the Rohingya camps the rate is 18.2 percent – three times higher but with no aid,” Sollom said.

‘Violating human rights’

Up to 300,000 Rohingyas, who have been described by the United Nations as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world, have fled across the border to Bangladesh since the 1970′s.

The report said the country’s authorities were waging a campaign of “arbitrary arrest, illegal expulsion, and forced internment”.

The police are “systematically rounding up, jailing or summarily expelling these unregistered refugees across the Myanmar border in flagrant violation of the country’s human rights obligations,” it said.

‘Baseless and malicious’

The report follows two other reports: one by Arakan Project, a lobby group, and another by Doctors Without Borders, a humanitarian NGO, which also criticised the crackdown.

The Bangladeshi government has dismissed the accusations as “baseless and malicious”.

It views the Rohingya as elligal immigrants and maintains they must be repatriated.

“We are arresting illegal Rohingya and pushing them back over the border. It is an ongoing operation,” said Rafiqul Islam, a Bangladeshi police chief.
Counter Part :
The report, “Stateless and Starving: Persecuted Rohingya Flee Burma and Starve in Bangladesh,” also called the makeshift camps for unregistered refugees “open-air prisons” where children face severe malnutrition due to a lack of food aid and restricted movement outside of camps.

“The government of Bangladesh is absolutely ignoring it. They are sweeping it under the rug,” said Richard Sollom, director of research and investigation for the group based in Cambridge, Mass. “Basically, it’s the policy of the government that they simply want (the refugees) to disappear.”

In addition, Sollom said Bangladesh authorities are preventing outside humanitarian aid to get to the refugees.

Abdul Momen, Bangladesh’s representative in the United Nations, called that charge “totally false” and said government officials just have to make sure that any aid isn’t coming from terrorist groups.

“Bangladesh always stands by human rights,” said Momen. “(But) we are the victims. The Burmese people have been kicked out of their country and we gave them shelter. We are an impoverished country, and in spite of that, we tried to help them as best we can.”

Momen said the influx of refugees in Bangladesh is putting pressure on the country, roughly the size of Massachusetts, since it is already overcrowded with a population of 160 million.

Momen said there may be one or two “sporadic incidents,” but denied that there was widespread abuse.

“We are trying our best to keep them in good humor,” said Momen.

Last weekend, Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dipu Moni called for the repatriation of Burmese refugees back to Myanmar. She called media reports about the ill treatment of refugees “baseless and malicious.”

However, several international aid groups have protested against the treatment of the Rohingya in Bangladesh. Medecins Sans Frontieres-Holland said last month that a violent crackdown against Rohingya is forcing thousands to flee their homes, fearing local authorities and citizens who are trying to force them to go back to Myanmar.

“MSF is treating victims of beatings and harassment, including people the Bangladeshi Border Force has attempted to forcibly repatriate to Myanmar. As camp numbers continue to swell, conditions pose a significant risk to people’s health,” the group said then in a statement.

A Birmingham, U.K.-based aid group, Islamic Relief Worldwide, also pulled out of a makeshift refugee camp in southern Bangladesh on Feb. 28 because the government did not permit them to work with nearly 13,000 unregistered Rohingyas receiving services there, according to the U.N.’s humanitarian news service, IRIN.

The Burmese refugee population in Bangladesh is estimated between 200,000 to 400,000, according to Physicians for Human Rights. The Bangladesh government and the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees jointly administer two recognized camps with 28,000 registered refugees.

The group issued its report after Sollom and a team visited camps last month in Bangladesh and surveyed 100 refugee families.

The government of Bangladesh needs “to cease immediately from arbitrary arresting and forcibly expelling legitimate refugees and they do not have an administrative framework for determining refugee status as do most countries,” Sollom said.

“They need to allow the international humanitarian organizations full and unobstructed access because they are obstructing access right now,” Sollom said.

Physicians for Human Rights, founded in 1986, mobilizes health professionals to research conditions in war zones, U.S. prisons, immigration detention centers and others, according to its Web site. The group pushes policymakers to do something if they find unhealthy conditions.

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Burmese Rohingya refugees camp – bangladesh

Tags: arbitrary arrest, Bangladesh, Bangladesh Government, Burmese refugees, Human Rights, illegal expulsion, internment., PHR, Rohingya camps, vulnerable population

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 at 8:34 am and is filed under Bangladesh, Bangladesh, Human Resources, Bangladesh, Human Rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.