DHAKA, Bangladesh: An international representative of ethnic Rohingya refugees was shot to death in a camp in Bangladesh by unknown gunmen late Wednesday, police said.
Mohibullah, 50, was a teacher who emerged as a key refugee leader and a spokesman representing the Muslim ethnic group in international meetings. He visited the White House in 2019 for a meeting on religious freedom with then-President Donald Trump and spoke about the suffering and persecution faced by Rohingya in Myanmar.
That same year, he was bitterly criticized by Bangladeshi media after he led a massive rally of 200,000 refugees to mark the second anniversary of the crackdown by Myanmar’s military that caused about 700,000 Rohingya, including Mohibullah, to flee to neighboring Bangladesh.
The unidentified attackers shot Mohibullah at the Kutupalong refugee camp at Ukhiya in Cox’s Bazar district, said Naimul Haque, an commander of the Armed Police Battalion in Cox’s Bazar. He was rushed to a hospital where he was declared dead.
No groups claimed responsibility and it was not clear immediately who was behind the attack.
Human Rights Watch called Mohibullah a vital voice for the Rohingya community. “He always defended the rights of the Rohingya to safe and dignified returns and to have a say in the decisions concerning their lives and future. His killing is a stark demonstration of the risks faced by those in the camps who speak up for freedom and against violence,” Meenakshi Ganguly, the rights group's South Asia director, said in a statement.
“Mohibullah’s death undermines not only the struggle of Rohingya refugees for greater rights and protection in the refugee camps, but also their efforts to safely return to their homes in Myanmar. Bangladesh authorities should urgently investigate Mohibullah’s killing along with other attacks on Rohingya activists in the camps," she said.
Overall, Bangladesh has been sheltering more than 1.1 million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar after previous waves of persecution.
Rohingya refugee leader shot dead in Bangladesh camp
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Rohingya refugee leader shot dead in Bangladesh camp
- No groups claimed responsibility and it was not clear immediately who was behind the attack
Gisèle Pelicot recounts harrowing discovery of her husband’s rape crimes
PARIS: Gisèle Pelicot’s brain froze as the French police officer revealed the unthinkable.
“Fifty-three men had come to our house to rape me,” she recalls him telling her.
Sharing details of the horror that until now had largely been reserved for French courts, Pelicot is publicly telling her story of survival and courage in her own words, in a book and her first series of interviews since a landmark trial in 2024 turned her into a global icon against sexual violence and imprisoned her husband who knocked her out with drugs so other men could assault her inert body.
Extracts of “A Hymn to Life, Shame Has to Change Sides,” published by French newspaper Le Monde, rewound to Nov. 2, 2020 — the day when her world fell apart. Her then-husband, Dominique Pelicot, had been summoned by police for questioning after a supermarket security guard caught him secretly taking video up women’s skirts.
Gisèle accompanied him and was completely unprepared for the bombshell delivered by the officer, Laurent Perret. Gradually, and with care, he explained how the man she regarded as a loving husband and whom she described as “a super guy” had, in fact, made her the unwitting victim of his perversions.
“I am going to show you photos and videos that are not going to please you,” the officer said, words she recounts in the book.
The first showed a man raping a woman who had been laid out on her side and dressed up in a suspender belt.
“That’s you in this photo,” the officer said. He then showed her another photo, and another after that — drawn from a collection of images that Dominique Pelicot took of his wife over the years when he regularly knocked her unconscious by lacing her food and drink with drugs, so strangers he invited to their home could assault her while he filmed.
