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by Sam Jahan Agence France Presse CHALAN BEEL, Bangladesh (AFP) — Mosammat Rekha’s older cousins grew up unable to read and write, their tiny village so frequently cut off from the nearest school by floods that would rise suddenly in their remote corner of disaster-prone Bangladesh. But seven-year-old Mosammat is learning her ABCs aboard a boat fitted with a classroom and play equipment that is helping children thrive even as climate change alters the world […]
by Jan Hennop Agence France Presse THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AFP) — The International Criminal Court said Thursday it had jurisdiction to probe the forced deportation of Rohingya Muslims by Myanmar’s military as a possible crime against humanity. Some 700,000 people from the stateless Muslim minority have fled Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state into neighbouring Bangladesh since August last year to escape a bloody military crackdown. The ICC’s “pre-trial chamber… decided by majority the court may exercise […]
by Aidan Jones / with Hla-Hla Htay in Maungdaw Agence France-Presse COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh (AFP) — With a repatriation plan in tatters and funding evaporating for a million refugees with ever-growing needs, Rohingya Muslims who fled Myanmar to Bangladesh face a grim future one year after the latest eruption of a decades-old conflict. Raids by Rohingya militants on August 25 last year across Myanmar’s Rakhine state spurred an army crackdown which the United Nations has […]
KUTUPALONG, Bangladesh (AFP) — UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he heard “unimaginable” accounts of atrocities during a visit Monday to vast camps in Bangladesh that are home to a million Rohingya refugees who fled violence in Myanmar. Guterres described the situation for the persecuted Muslim minority as “a humanitarian and human rights nightmare,” as he prepared to tour makeshift shelters crammed with people who escaped a huge Myanmar army operation last year that the UN […]
by Shafiqul Alam / Sam Jahan © Agence France-Presse DHAKA, Bangladesh (AFP) — The World Cup is arousing high passions in Bangladesh, where machete-wielding fans of Brazil and Argentina have clashed in the streets and flags of the two countries are so ubiquitous that some people want to ban them. Ignoring the lack of any obvious link to the South American giants, and the absence of their national team — which is ranked 194th […]
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AFP) — Shootouts across Bangladesh left nine alleged drug dealers dead Thursday, police said, as authorities stepped up a crackdown that now has claimed at least 52 lives in 10 days and drawn criticism from rights groups. The campaign comes as Bangladesh struggles to contain a surging drugs trade, particularly in methamphetamine pills known as “yaba”. However, human rights groups say many of the deaths are the result of extra-judicial killings. Two of […]
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AFP) — Dozens of Bangladeshis were killed in lightning strikes as pre-monsoon thunderstorms wreaked havoc across the South Asian country, an official said Thursday. Farmers harvesting rice in open fields made up the majority of victims, Iftekharul Islam, a director at Bangladesh’s disaster management department, told AFP. “In the last 24 hours, 29 people have died from lightning in 12 districts. Almost all of them are farmers,” he said. Scores of people die […]
YANGON, Myanmar (AFP) — Rohingya refugees who return to Myanmar will be safe as long as they stay in the model villages built for them, the country’s army chief has said, renewing fears they will be kept in settlements indefinitely. Some 700,000 Rohingya Muslims fled Buddhist-majority Myanmar to Bangladesh after the military launched a brutal crackdown on insurgents in August that the US and the UN have called ethnic cleansing. Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed to […]
KUTUPALONG, Bangladesh (AFP) — A UN Security Council team visited Rohingya refugees trapped in the no man’s land along the border between Bangladesh and Myanmar Sunday, as it weighs its response to one of the world’s worst refugee crises. Myanmar has faced intense international pressure since the start of a military campaign in August that has driven some 700,000 Rohingya Muslims over the border into Bangladesh, where refugees have provided harrowing testimony of murder and rape […]
by Carole Landry Agence France Presse UNITED NATIONS, United States (AFP) — The UN Security Council will pay a visit to Bangladesh and Myanmar beginning Saturday as it weighs next steps to address one of the world’s worst refugee crises, stemming from the forced exodus of Muslim Rohingya. Myanmar has come under international scrutiny since a military campaign launched in August drove more than 700,000 Rohingya from their homes in northern Rakhine state and into […]
by Athens Zaw Zaw with Sam Jahan in Dhaka © Agence France-Presse YANGON, Myanmar (AFP) — Myanmar’s government said it has repatriated the first family of Rohingya refugees, among the 700,000 who fled a brutal crackdown, but the move was slammed by rights groups as a publicity stunt which ignored warnings over the security of returnees. The stateless Muslim minority has been massing in squalid refugee camps across the border in Bangladesh since the Myanmar army […]
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AFP) — Thousands of students across Bangladesh staged protests and sit-ins Monday after clashes at the country’s top university left at least 100 people injured. Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at Dhaka University students fighting what they consider “discriminatory” government job quotas in favor of special groups. It was one of the biggest protests faced by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in her decade in power. A minister was due to meet […]
