The Rohingya is a Muslim minority from predominantly Buddhist Myanmar, where they face long-term discrimination. In 2017, about 750,000 fled to neighboring Bangladesh after ethnic cleansing by Buddhist militias and the military. They joined the roughly 200,000 other Rohings who had driven out previous waves of violence.
The influx of refugees has led the Bangladeshi authorities to build camps, which are overcrowded and in poor conditions.
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The island of Thengar Car was formed less than two decades ago by the accumulation of sediments from the Meghna River. In the monsoon season from June to September, it is regularly flooded, so people from the area consider it uninhabitable.
The Bangladeshi army built houses for about 100,000 Rohingya, hospitals and mosques on it and built a dam to protect them from floods. In the first phase of the transfer from the crowded refugee camps, 2,500 refugees are to be relocated to the island.
According to human rights organizations, the island is unsuitable for settlement
The operation has aroused criticism from human rights organizations. They point out that the low-lying island has been regularly under storms and floods in the past and is therefore unsuitable for settlement.
For example, the South Asian branch of Amnesty International and the American group Refugees International called for the resettlement to be stopped, according to which the Bangladeshi government’s plan is “short-sighted and inhumane.” However, the government claims that it does not force Rohingy to leave the island and that it has sufficiently dealt with the danger of natural disasters, Reuters reports.
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