COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh: A spate of bloody killings is fueling unease in the Rohingya camps on the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, where overstretched police are struggling to protect nearly a million traumatized refugees from violent gangs.
Just 1,000 police officers guard the labyrinthine shanties that make up the giant camps and authorities want to more than double the force in the wake of the murders.
Three respected community leaders are among those slain in what police suspect is a power struggle between Rohingya gangs in the refugee slums in camps around Cox’s Bazar.
One, Arifullah, was stabbed 25 times on a busy road in June and left in a pool of blood. The other two were killed in their shacks just days apart by masked assailants.
Police in the crime-ridden Cox’s Bazar district are investigating 21 refugee murders, many in recent months, which they blame on score-settling and turf wars.
Many in Kutupalong, the world’s biggest refugee camp, and others nearby, say the unchecked violence leaves Rohingya families at the mercy of criminals.
“When the gangs come into the camps, people call the police. But they only arrive after the criminals are gone,” said 16-year-old Runa Akter, whose father disappeared in July with a relative who was later found dead.
Police only filed a case after her uncle’s body was found, she said.
“We are scared. We are especially worried about my brother, because there have been threats to kidnap and kill him,” the anxious teenager said. “I don’t want to lose anyone else in my family.”
A police investigator, SM Atiq Ullah, said no suspects had been identified so far.
Criminals have long preyed on the Rohingya camps however.
Police say refugees with ties to Bangladeshi drug and human trafficking networks have sold Rohingya girls into sex and recruited mules to courier methamphetamine.
The scourge has intensified since an army crackdown in Buddhist-dominated Myanmar drove nearly 700,000 of the stateless Muslim minority into Bangladesh last year.
Hundreds of Rohingya refugees have been arrested since the August influx for rape, drug offenses, human trafficking and weapons possession, among other crimes.
Afruzul Haque Tutul, a senior police officer who until mid-August was deputy chief of Cox’s Bazar, said gangs cashing in on the human misery were extorting “huge money” from new refugees desperate for land, shelter and food.
Internal feuds over territory quickly turn deadly.
Among the bodies was Arifullah, one of the “mahjis” or community leaders tasked with overseeing day-to-day camp affairs.
As an English speaker, he met with dignitaries and liaised closely with police — a position of power Tutul says could have irked rivals.
Arifullah’s wife blamed Rohingya militants for the death of her husband who was surrounded and stabbed by a group of men.
She said that Arifullah was a “big critic” of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), the shadowy group whose attacks in Myanmar sparked the military reprisals.
Bangladesh denies the militants have a foothold in the camps and the group distanced itself from crime in a rare January statement issued after two mahjis were murdered.
“It is very challenging, and sometimes threatening, being a mahji,” said Arifullah’s right-hand man, Abdur Rahim, who took over four days after his friend’s killing.
Just a day earlier, a mahji in a neighboring camp was savagely beaten by a mob but there were not enough police to deter violence, he said in his bamboo office in Balukhali camp.
Tutul said patrols had been increased but forces were spread thin. Some 1,500 additional officers had been requested from Dhaka, he added.
“Definitely it’s a huge task. We are trying our best to control the area,” he said.
As the body count climbed, Bangladesh’s Daily Star newspaper in July printed an editorial declaring it “amateurish to hope that less than 3,000 police would be enough” to guard one million desperate people.
The murders and other unexplained crimes have eroded trust in law enforcement and underscored gaps in policing.
On one recent visit, AFP reporters saw a police unit armed with shotguns and sticks patrol a camp near where two men were found dead in July.
But a community leader, who requested anonymity, said: “There are no police after midnight. Even during the day, during their shifts, they often stay in their posts.”
Few officers speak the Rohingya language, further hampering inquiries. Fear has kept mouths shut.
“That is why Rohingyas do not come forward. They are scared. In your town, if criminals or terrorists or robbers were there, definitely you will be scared,” Tutul said.
Aid groups are installing floodlights to improve safety, especially for women, and police checkposts are planned for vulnerable areas of the dense slums.
But Mohibullah, an influential Rohingya leader, said policing such ghetto-like conditions was difficult and crime was inevitable.
“It is very bad,” he said. “But, we think the refugee life is like this.”
Murders leave Rohingya camps gripped by fear
Murders leave Rohingya camps gripped by fear
- Three respected community leaders are among those slain in what police suspect is a power struggle between Rohingya gangs
- Gangs cashing in on the human misery were extorting ‘huge money’ from new refugees desperate for land, shelter and foo
War powers resolution fails in Senate as 2 Republicans bow to Trump pressure
WASHINGTON: Senate Republicans voted to dismiss a war powers resolution Wednesday that would have limited President Donald Trump’s ability to conduct further attacks on Venezuela after two GOP senators reversed course on supporting the legislation.
Trump put intense pressure on five Republican senators who joined with Democrats to advance the resolution last week and ultimately prevailed in heading off passage of the legislation. Two of the Republicans — Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Todd Young of Indiana — flipped under the pressure.
Vice President JD Vance had to break the 50-50 deadlock in the Senate on a Republican motion to dismiss the bill.
The outcome of the high-profile vote demonstrated how Trump still has command over much of the Republican conference, yet the razor-thin vote tally also showed the growing concern on Capitol Hill over the president’s aggressive foreign policy ambitions.
Democrats forced the debate after US troops captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in a surprise nighttime raid earlier this month
“Here we have one of the most successful attacks ever and they find a way to be against it. It’s pretty amazing. And it’s a shame,” Trump said at a speech in Michigan Tuesday. He also hurled insults at several of the Republicans who advanced the legislation, calling Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky a “stone cold loser” and Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine “disasters.” Those three Republicans stuck to their support for the legislation.
Trump’s latest comments followed earlier phone calls with the senators, which they described as terse. The president’s fury underscored how the war powers vote had taken on new political significance as Trump also threatens military action to accomplish his goal of possessing Greenland.
The legislation, even if it had cleared the Senate, had virtually no chance of becoming law because it would eventually need to be signed by Trump himself. But it represented both a test of GOP loyalty to the president and a marker for how much leeway the Republican-controlled Senate is willing to give Trump to use the military abroad. Republican angst over his recent foreign policy moves — especially threats of using military force to seize Greenland from a NATO ally — is still running high in Congress.
Two Republicans reconsider
Hawley, who helped advance the war powers resolution last week, said Trump’s message during a phone call was that the legislation “really ties my hands.” The senator said he had a follow-up phone call with Secretary of State Marco Rubio Monday and was told “point blank, we’re not going to do ground troops.”
The senator added that he also received assurances that the Trump administration will follow constitutional requirements if it becomes necessary to deploy troops again to the South American country.
“We’re getting along very well with Venezuela,” Trump told reporters at a ceremony for the signing of an unrelated bill Wednesday.
As senators went to the floor for the vote Wednesday evening, Young also told reporters he was no longer in support. He said that he had extensive conversations with Rubio and received assurances that the secretary of state will appear at a public hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Young also shared a letter from Rubio that stated the president will “seek congressional authorization in advance (circumstances permitting)” if he engaged in “major military operations” in Venezuela.
The senators also said his efforts were also instrumental in pushing the administration to release Wednesday a 22-page Justice Department memo laying out the legal justification for the snatch-and-grab operation against Maduro.
That memo, which was heavily redacted, indicates that the administration, for now, has no plans to ramp up military operations in Venezuela.
“We were assured that there is no contingency plan to engage in any substantial and sustained operation that would amount to a constitutional war,” according to the memo signed by Assistant Attorney General Elliot Gaiser.
Trump’s shifting rationale for military intervention
Trump has used a series of legal arguments for his campaign against Maduro.
As he built up a naval force in the Caribbean and destroyed vessels that were allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela, the Trump administration tapped wartime powers under the global war on terror by designating drug cartels as terrorist organizations.
The administration has claimed the capture of Maduro himself was actually a law enforcement operation, essentially to extradite the Venezuelan president to stand trial for charges in the US that were filed in 2020.
Paul criticized the administration for first describing its military build-up in Caribbean as a counternarcotics operation but now floating Venezuela’s vast oil reserves as a reason for maintaining pressure.
“The bait and switch has already happened,” he said.
Trump’s foreign policy worries Congress
Lawmakers, including a significant number of Republicans, have been alarmed by Trump’s recent foreign policy talk. In recent weeks, he has pledged that the US will “run” Venezuela for years to come, threatened military action to take possession of Greenland and told Iranians protesting their government that ” help is on its way.”
Senior Republicans have tried to massage the relationship between Trump and Denmark, a NATO ally that holds Greenland as a semi-autonomous territory. But Danish officials emerged from a meeting with Vance and Rubio Wednesday saying a “fundamental disagreement” over Greenland remains.
“What happened tonight is a roadmap to another endless war,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said at a news conference following the vote.
More than half of US adults believe President Donald Trump has “gone too far” in using the US military to intervene in other countries, according to a new AP-NORC poll.
House Democrats have also filed a similar war powers resolution and can force a vote on it as soon as next week.
How Republican leaders dismissed the bill
Last week’s procedural vote on the war powers resolution was supposed to set up hours of debate and a vote on final passage. But Republican leaders began searching for a way to defuse the conflict between their members and Trump as well as move on quickly to other business.
Once Hawley and Young changed their support for the bill, Republicans were able to successfully challenge whether it was appropriate when the Trump administration has said US troops are not currently deployed in Venezuela.
“We’re not currently conducting military operations there,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune in a floor speech. “But Democrats are taking up this bill because their anti-Trump hysteria knows no bounds.”
Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, who has brought a series of war powers resolutions this year, accused Republicans of burying a debate about the merits of an ongoing campaign of attacks and threats against Venezuela.
“If this cause and if this legal basis were so righteous, the administration and its supporters would not be afraid to have this debate before the public and the United States Senate,” he said in a floor speech.
