Free Rohingya Campaign

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Myanmar refugees clash in Bangladesh, 40 hurt

COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh (Reuters) -
At least 40 Myanmarese Muslims were wounded on Sunday when rival groups clashed over refugee registration at an unauthorised camp in southeastern Bangladesh, officials said.
Police brought the violence under control at Damdamia where thousands of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar have lived illegally for a decade as unregistered refugees.

The refugees, who fled west Myanmar's Muslim-majority Arakan state to escape alleged military persecution and find work, are living outside two official government refugee camps in the Cox's Bazar district, 400 km southeast of Dhaka.

More than 20,000 Rohingyas now live in the two government camps at Kutupalong and Nayapara near Cox's Bazar.

"The clash occurred this morning as a group was demanding inclusion of more refugees in the list handed over to the government," said administrative officer Mohammad Mohsin Chowdhury.Sticks and bricks were used during the hour-long clash, he said.Earlier refugee leaders handed over a list of more than 6,000 refugees to the government, but one group complained thousands of Rohingyas had been omitted.

The list was prepared as part of a plan to give the Rohingyas refugee status after a recent visit to their camp by a team of the European Commission and the U.N. High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR), another official said.Some 250,000 Rohingyas crossed into Bangladesh in early 1992. Most had been repatriated by 2002 under UNHCR supervision.Since then there has been little homeward movement while more Rohingyas have trickled in across the porous 320-km Bangladesh-Myanmar border.

Bangladeshi officials say most of the Rohingyas are economic migrants whom Myanmar authorities are not keen to take back.

Despite requests from some international agencies, impoverished and overpopulated Bangladesh has said it will never offer the Rohingyas a permanent home.

posted by Ko Zaw at 6:02 PM