Bangladesh hosting more than a million Rohingya refugees: Official

Rasa - Bangladesh says it has counted over a million Rohingya Muslim refugees living in camps near its border with Myanmar, higher than previous estimates.

News ID: 435868

Date: 18 January 2018 - 19:46

RNA - Saidur Rahman, a brigadier general with the Bangladesh army who heads the Rohingya registration project said on Wednesday that several thousand more had yet to be registered.

"So far we've registered 1,004,742 Rohingya. They are given biometric registration cards," media outlets quoted Rahman as saying

The figures are higher than those provided by the United Nations, which estimates there are 962,000 Rohingya living in southeast Bangladesh.

The Bangladesh army began biometric registering of the refugees last year after the latest mass influx of Rohingya from Myanmar.

The registration is aimed partly at aiding repatriation of the refugees. Bangladeshi authorities said on Tuesday that they had reached an initial agreement with Myanmar to complete the process within two years.

Rights groups and the UN have voiced serious reservations about starting the process.

James Gomez, Amnesty International's regional director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, said on Tuesday, "With memories of rape, killing and torture still fresh in the minds of Rohingya refugees, plans for their return to Myanmar are alarmingly premature."

"The obfuscation and denials of the Myanmar authorities give no reason to hope that the rights of returning Rohingya would be protected, or that the reasons for their original flight no longer exist," he added

The UN says nearly 655,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Rakhine for Bangladesh since violence intensified last August.

Since August 25, 2017, Myanmar's troops have been committing killings and rapes, making arbitrary arrests, and carrying out mass arson attacks to destroy houses in Rakhine.

Only in its first month, the military clampdown killed some 6,700 Rohingya Muslims, including more than 700 children, according to the international medical charity Doctors Without Borders.

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