Bangladesh: authorities destroy makeshift Rohingya businesses
A vast operation to demolish the makeshift businesses of Rohingya in a refugee camp took place in Bangladesh, this Friday, December 10, 2021. © TANBIR MIRAJ / AFP
Text by: RFI Follow
1 min
The living conditions of the Rohingya are only deteriorating in Bangladesh.
The authorities have launched a vast operation to demolish their makeshift businesses.
A further blow inflicted on some 850,000 members of this Muslim minority who live in extremely precarious conditions in refugee camps in Cox's Bazar after being driven from neighboring Burma.
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Hundreds of camp residents watched helplessly as the bulldozers did their job.
A thousand stalls were destroyed Thursday December 9 and Friday December 10 in several camps around Cox's Bazar.
Small businesses where refugees used to do their daily shopping.
The owners only had a few minutes to save their belongings.
They now find themselves without anything to feed their loved ones.
"
It was my only way to support my family of seven
," one of the traders, al-Amin, told Agence France Presse.
Another, Abdur Rashid, finds it hard to believe it: with his pregnant wife and dependent parents, he says he has lost everything.
Send the Rohingyas to Bashan Char
The camp managers' argument: space had to be made to build new shelters.
The destroyed stores were, according to them, illegal businesses.
But some put forward another explanation: with these brutal methods, the authorities would try to convince more Rohingyas to leave the 34 misery camps in which they live.
The goal would be to
relocate them to Bhashan Char
, a new camp built on a desert island far from the coast which already hosts 19,000 refugees.
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See also: Rohingya refugees file a complaint against Facebook
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Bangladesh
Rohingya
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