DHAKA: Another 3,000 Rohingya refugees have been relocated by Bangladesh to a remote silt island in the Bay of Bengal, officials said Tuesday, bringing the total number taken to the new settlement to more than 10,000.
Dhaka wants to relocate 100,000 Rohingya from squalid border camps in southeastern Bangladesh, where nearly a million of the Muslim minority have lived in crowded conditions since fleeing a 2017 military offensive in neighboring Myanmar.
About 2,000 more refugees were moved to Bhashan Char on Monday and another 1,000 on Tuesday, Anwarul Kabir, a senior officer with the Bangladesh navy, told AFP.
Their arrival comes after around 7,000 men, women and children were taken in December and January to the 53-square-kilometer island, which is a three-hour boat journey from the southeastern port of Chittagong.
Bangladesh’s Deputy Refugee Commissioner Mohammad Shamsud Douza told AFP the Rohingya had moved to the island “spontaneously and willingly.”
“They are taking their dogs, bunnies and goats to the island with them,” Douza said.
But rights activists say not all the refugees have left voluntarily and critics have said the island is prone to flooding and is in the path of deadly cyclones.
There has been fighting in recent months between rival Rohingya drug gangs in southeastern Bangladesh’s refugee camps — the world’s largest — with several people killed and several others reported injured.
Officials said they were hoping to move more refugees to the island ahead of the April-May cyclone season and the June-September monsoon, when the sea is rough.
The United Nations says it has not been involved in the relocations.
More Rohingya moved to remote Bangladesh island
https://arab.news/j9zgv
More Rohingya moved to remote Bangladesh island
- Dhaka wants to relocate 100,000 Rohingya from squalid border camps in southeastern Bangladesh
- Rights activists say not all the refugees have left voluntarily and critics have said the island is prone to flooding
Kosovo, Serbia ‘need to normalize’ relations
- Kosovo, which hopes to join NATO, has also been cultivating relations with Washington in recent months, by removing tariffs on American products
PRISTINA: Kosovo and Serbia need to “normalize” their relations, Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti said, several days before legislative elections where he is seeking to extend his term with more solid backing.
Kurti has been in office since 2021 and previous accords signed with Serbia — which does not recognize the independence of its former province — have yet to be respected.
“We need to normalize relations with Serbia,” said Kurti. “But normalizing relations with a neighboring authoritarian regime that doesn’t recognize you, that also doesn’t admit to the crimes committed during the war, is quite difficult,” he added.
Tensions between the two neighbors are regularly high.
“We do have a normalization agreement,” Kurti said, referring to the agreement signed under the auspices of the EU in 2023.
“We must implement it, which implies mutual recognition between the countries, at least de facto recognition.”
But to resume dialogue, Serbia “must hand over Milan Radoicic,” a Serb accused of plotting an attack in northern Kosovo in 2023, Kurti asserted, hoping that “the EU, France, and Germany will put pressure” on Belgrade to do so.
Kosovo, which hopes to join NATO, has also been cultivating relations with Washington in recent months, by removing tariffs on American products and agreeing to accept up to 50 migrants from third countries extradited by the US. So far, only one has arrived.
“We are not asking for any financial assistance in return,” Kurti emphasized. “We are doing this to help the US, which is a partner, an ally, a friend,” added the prime minister, who did not rule out making similar agreements with European countries.
Unable to secure enough seats in the February 2025 parliamentary elections, Kurti was forced to call early elections on Sunday, after 10 months of political deadlock during which the divided parliament failed to form a coalition.
“We need a decisive victory. In February, we won 42.3 percent, and this time we want to exceed 50 percent,” he said.
