Some 20,000 Rohingya have entered Bangladesh in the last three months as they flee worsening conditions in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, with some new arrivals taking shelter in rented houses outside U.N.-administered camps, refugees and local officials say.
The uptick comes with Bangladesh enmeshed in political turmoil and amid worsening violence in Rakhine, which lies just across its southeastern border. Arakan Army insurgents have been waging a fierce campaign to wrest control of the state from Myanmar's military government.
“There is a terrible situation in Rakhine. There is no condition to stay there. No food, no shelter, no treatment for sick people,” said Mohammed Feroz Kamal, who arrived last week from Rakhine’s Maungdaw district.
“Drone attacks are being carried out, especially on the people who have gathered to flee to the border in that country,” he told BenarNews. “Hundreds of people are dying. ”I saw many dead bodies on the way.”
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Rohingya community leader Mohammed Jubair, chairman of the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Humanity, said at least 20,000 people had crossed into Bangladesh during the past three months.
But a Bangladeshi official put the number at around 16,000.
"They used the poor law-and-order situation as an advantage," Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner Mohammed Mizanur Rahman told BenarNews, referring to the chaotic and lawless atmosphere in Bangladesh before and after the Sheikh Hasina government fell in early August.
Earlier this week, in the face of new cross-border arrivals, Bangladesh transitional government head Muhammad Yunus called on the international community to speed up efforts to resettle Rohingya refugees in third countries.
The "resettlement process should be easy, regular and smooth," Yunus said during a meeting on Sept. 8 with the International Organisation for Migration, Reutersreported.
The interim administration headed by Yunus, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and pioneer of microcredit loans, has been struggling to maintain law and order since Hasina resigned and fled the country amid student-led, anti-government protests.
This week, a BenarNews correspondent visited several villages, including the municipal town of Teknaf, which lies along the border with Myanmar.
According to local officials, Rohingyas are crossing the frontier into Bangladesh every day.
“Border Guard Bangladesh and Bangladesh Coast Guard are working to prevent Rohingyas at the border,” Mohammed Adnan Chowdhury, executive officer of Teknaf Upazila sub-district, told BenarNews. “However, some Rohingyas are entering the border in the middle of the night. Many of them are renting houses in the main towns of the city and entering the villages.”
He and others described how the recent influx differed from those in the past, including in 2017 when some 740,000 Rohingya fled into Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district over a period of months.
Rented digs
Most of the new arrivals are businessmen or from relatively well-to-do families in Maungdaw district, Rohingya community leaders said.
Feroz, who paid a broker 50,000 Bangladeshi taka (US$418) to enter Bangladesh, is now spending 4,000 taka (US$33) per month to stay in a six-room, tin-roofed house in Teknaf alongside two other Rohingya families already living there.
Another Rohingya, Nur Shahed, is staying in an apartment with another Rohingya family in Teknaf’s Shilbania neighborhood
He said he had intended to take his family to the Kutupalong refugee camp, but there was no more space.
“So many people like me have taken shelter here in villages and in rented houses,” he told BenarNews.
Immigration expert C.R. Abrar, a professor at Dhaka University, underlined that regardless of their income status, the new arrivals were being forced to come to Bangladesh to save their lives.
“Therefore, they should not be treated as criminals under any circumstances; they should be given facilities and security as refugees,” he said, noting that Bangladesh — with its huge refugee population — should pass laws on how to treat them, and participate in related international agreements.
“Those who are outside the refugee camps are in a more vulnerable situation than those inside the camps,” he said. “They are likely to face various forms of harassment and violence. Therefore, they should be taken to the camps, from a humanitarian point of view, as the primary task.”
BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.