DHAKA: Human Rights Watch yesterday slammed the Bangladeshi government’s “cruel” restrictions on humanitarian aid to Rohingya Muslim refugees fleeing persecution and violence in neighboring Myanmar. The South Asian nation last month ordered three international charities — Doctors Without Borders, Action Against Hunger and Muslim Aid UK — to stop giving aid to the Rohingya because it might encourage a fresh influx. Bangladesh is already home to some 300,000 Rohingya and the country’s border forces have turned back scores of boats carrying hundreds more since sectarian violence broke out in Myanmar, formerly Burma, in June.
“The Bangladeshi government is trying to make conditions for Rohingya refugees already living in Bangladesh so awful that people fleeing brutal abuses in neighboring Burma will stay home,” said HRW’s refugee policy director Bill Frelick. “This is a cruel and inhumane policy that should immediately be reversed,” he said. The New York-based rights group said Dhaka had signed the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which prohibits the country from denying those within its borders, including refugees, access to food and healthcare. The three charities provide water, healthcare, sanitation and other basic aid to Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. Aid workers have said the conditions in the makeshift camps for Rohingya are among the worst in the world. Speaking a Bengali dialect similar to one in southeast Bangladesh, the Rohingya people are Muslims seen as illegal immigrants by Buddhist-majority Myanmar and viewed by the UN as one of the world’s most persecuted minorities.