January 17, 2018
Recent news about a meeting between Bangladeshi and Myanmar delegates in Naypyidaw and news of the construction of ‘temporary’ refugee camps being built in Naffura and Taung Pyo near the Bangladesh border is spreading panic among Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.
Earlier, Ma Ba Tha and ANP leaders have categorically stated that Rohingyas must be confined to IDP camps in the Eastern Maungdaw region where they cannot have contact with the outside world and Bangladesh.
Rohingyas fear that not only will they be confined to a life as prisoner in IDP camps, but they will be at the tender mercies of the security forces and heavily armed Buddhist vigilantes who will surround them from all sides if repatriation takes place under current circumstances.
The conditions of IDP camps in Akyab and the southern townships where more than 140,000 Rohingyas are confined since 2012 has been described as open air prisons without basic medical facilities and immense shortage of food, with Rohingyas having to walk through streets littered with human sewage.
