COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh: Bangladesh has proposed the setting up of safe zones in Myanmar’s Rakhine State to facilitate the return of displaced Rohingya Muslims, said a senior member of the advisory council of the ruling Bangladesh Awami League.
Such zones should be under the supervision of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), said Mohammad Zamir, who is also a former ambassador.
“Bangladesh should push the UN to pass a resolution over the suffering of the uprooted Rohingya,” he added.
“America, China, Russia, India and other countries should come forward with a positive mindset in this regard.”
Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s Minister for Disaster and Relief Management Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury Maya on Saturday said the government is planning to allot 2,000 acres of land in Cox’s Bazar “to accommodate the recent influx of Rohingya refugees.”
During a visit to Teknaf Thana refugee camp, he added that the government is doing its best to address the humanitarian crisis facing the refugees.
Khaled Mahmud, a district magistrate in Cox’s Bazar, said the government is preparing a “biometric database of all the Rohingya refugees who’ve entered Bangladesh.”
The fingerprints of all refugees will be collected, and the database will facilitate relief work and humanitarian aid, he added.
Zamir said the registration process should be coordinated with the UNHCR, the IOM and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), “because Myanmar might refuse to accept these people in future” by claiming they did not come from Rakhine.
Meanwhile, Washington has condemned Myanmar for “atrocities” committed by its army and border police against its Rohingya minority. The US Senate demanded that Myanmar allow the entry of UN observers.
Bangladesh urges UN to create safe zones in Rakhine state
Bangladesh urges UN to create safe zones in Rakhine state
French publisher recalls dictionary over ‘Jewish settler’ reference
- The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks”
- The four books are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said
PARSI: French publisher Hachette on Friday said it had recalled a dictionary that described the Israeli victims of the October 7, 2023 attacks as “Jewish settlers” and promised to review all its textbooks and educational materials.
The Larousse dictionary for 11- to 15-year-old students contained the same phrase as that discovered by an anti-racism body in three revision books, the company told AFP.
The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks, Israel decided to tighten its economic blockade and invade a large part of the Gaza Strip, triggering a major humanitarian crisis in the region.”
The worst attack in Israeli history saw militants from the Palestinian Islamist group kill around 1,200 people in settlements close to the Gaza Strip and at a music festival.
“Jewish settlers” is a term used to describe Israelis living on illegally occupied Palestinian land.
The four books, which were immediately withdrawn from sale, are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said, promising a “thorough review of its textbooks, educational materials and dictionaries.”
France’s leading publishing group, which came under the control of the ultra-conservative Vincent Bollore at the end of 2023, has begun an internal inquiry “to determine how such an error was made.”
It promised to put in place “a new, strengthened verification process for all its future publications” in these series.
President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said that it was “intolerable” that the revision books for the French school leavers’ exam, the baccalaureat, “falsify the facts” about the “terrorist and antisemitic attacks by Hamas.”
“Revisionism has no place in the Republic,” he wrote on X.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, with 251 people taken hostage, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Authorities in Gaza estimate that more than 70,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces during their bombardment of the territory since, while nearly 80 percent of buildings have been destroyed or damaged, according to UN data.
Israeli forces have killed at least 447 Palestinians in Gaza since a ceasefire took effect in October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
