New Delhi, Sep 4 (EFE).- Bangladesh announced that around 8,000 Rohingya arrived in the country recently fleeing armed conflict in neighboring Myanmar and promised to take new measures to try to contain the inflow of refugees.
“I have information that around 8,000 Rohingyas have entered Bangladesh. We will have a serious discussion at the cabinet within the next 2-3 days (regarding this),” Foreign Affairs adviser Touhid Hossain said on Tuesday, according to local media reports.
During the meeting, measures would be discussed to prevent the entry of additional Rohingyas into Bangladesh, which no longer had the capacity to provide humanitarian shelter to more refugees, he added.
There has been a rise in violence in Myanmar in recent months due to clashes between the military and armed militias, especially in Rakhine state, which borders Bangladesh and where a large proportion of the Rohingya population lives.
Hossain stressed the need to open a channel of communication with the ethnic guerrilla Arakan Army (AA), part of the rebel alliance that has been fighting the Myanmar military for months, and which controls part of Rakhine.
Bangladesh hosts more than a million Rohingya refugees, most of whom fled Myanmar in 2017, owing to a decision by the government of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to open the border during a military operation described as possible genocide by the United Nations.
However, most of them have since been living in overcrowded refugee camps in unsanitary conditions.
Dhaka has made several efforts in the past to begin repatriating members of this predominantly Muslim minority, whom Myanmar does not recognize as citizens, but all of them failed due to instability in their country of origin.
The head of Bangladesh’s interim government, Muhammad Yunus, said in August that his government would continue to support the Rohingyas who are in Bangladesh, but sought assistance from the international community for humanitarian operations for the Rohingyas and their eventual repatriation. EFE
hbc/pd
