BANGKOK (AlertNet) - Rohingyas treated for wounds near a makeshift camp in Bangladesh say local authorities and citizens have beaten them up and driven them out of their homes over the past few months, medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said on Thursday.
Dhaka says there are about 28,000 registered Rohingya refugees in two U.N.-run camps near the southeastern resort of Cox's Bazaar, and about 300,000 others living illegally outside the camps at Kutupalong and Nayapara.
Rohingyas, not recognised as an ethnic minority by Myanmar, allege human rights abuses by the country's military junta, saying it deprives them of free movement, education and rightful employment. They have been arriving in neighbouring Bangladesh since the late 1970s.
"Our clinic at Kutupalong outside the makeshift camp has treated people who have come to us with trauma wounds, who claimed they have been beaten by the police and claimed they've been living in Bangladesh for a number of years and their neighbours have turned on them," head of MSF's mission in Bangladesh, Paul Critchley, told AlertNet.
Rohingya Repatriation Commissioner in Cox's Bazaar, Firoz Salahuddin, said he had not heard of any crackdown but would look into the matter. He noted he was responsible only for registered refugees.
In June and July, Bangladeshi authorities demolished shelters and forcibly removed their inhabitants in an attempt to clear a space around the official U.N. camp in Kutupalong, MSF said in a report on its website.
"MSF witnessed first-hand violence against the unregistered Rohingya, and provided medical care for some of the consequences," the aid organisation added.
Then, in October, MSF again began to receive unregistered Rohingyas with violence-related injuries at its clinic in Kutupalong. According to MSF, the patients said they had been driven from their homes, many of them destroyed by the authorities, and some had been forced into a river and told to swim back to Myanmar.
"MSF has treated patients for beatings, for machete wounds, and for rape. This is continuing today," the charity said.
OVERCROWDING
Observers say already poor Bangladeshis resent Rohingyas for the pressure they are putting on scarce local services and resources.
"The best solution is to provide development for everybody in this area, not just for the Rohingyas but for the Bangladeshi population also, so there is no resentment," the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said.
Since October, the unofficial camp in Kutupalong has grown by more than a quarter or 6,000 people, with 2,000 of these arriving in January alone. As the numbers swell, the cramped and unsanitary living conditions pose significant health risks, MSF said.
One witness who declined to be named said: "The refugees live in huts built on a succession of hills and made of dried mud covered with torn out plastic sheets, branches and bamboo. During the monsoon season, the whole place is transformed into a giant muddy and slippery magma, a fertile ground for waterborne diseases."
There are nowhere near enough latrines at the camp either, according to Critchley.
"MSF calls for an immediate end to the violence, along with urgent measures by the government of Bangladesh and United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to increase protection to Rohingya seeking asylum in the country," the group said in a statement.
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