Bangladesh police tightening noose on Rohingya refugees

By Farid Ahmed, Dhaka

Bangladesh has directed the law-enforcing agencies to arrest Myanmarese Rohingyas living outside refugee camps, saying many of them are involved in militant activities.The Rohingyas, Myanmar's ethnic Muslim minority, fled to Bangladesh 1991-1992 to avoid persecution by the military regime. Following reports that many of the refugees were involved with local Islamic militant outfits, the Bangladesh government had mounted a strict vigilance on them, a senior official of the home ministry told IANS.The ministry, however, asked the agencies to deal with the refugees very cautiously as a number of international human rights bodies were apparently sympathetic toward Rohingyas, who had taken shelter in Bangladesh legally or illegally at different places in the two districts bordering Myanmar.The government sounded the alert after the arrest of 25 Rohingyas in Chittagong and their subsequent statements admitting their link with the local militants involved in the Aug 17 countrywide series of blasts and the Oct 3 bomb attacks on courts.

The ministry, at a meeting in the past week, decided to take action against Rohingyas involved in militancy, the official said. The meeting observed with grave concern that many of the refugees were involved with a number of Islamic militant groups in the name of religion. According to sources, some female refugees were also being recruited into militant groups and they were being trained to carry out militant activities.Over 250,000 ethnic Muslim minorities of Myanmar took shelter in Bangladesh during 1991-1992 to evade military persecution in Myanmar's Arakan state.

Most of the refugees have been repatriated to Myanmar with the help of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, but there are still more than 20,000 refugees living in camps of Cox's Bazar and Teknaf. Official sources said many of those who were repatriated to Myanmar had re-entered Bangladesh, where they were staying illegally.

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