Bangladesh Coast Guard detained 17 refugees and five human traffickers from Saint Martin’s Island in Teknaf, said a Coast Guard press release. The Rohingyas were sent back to their respective camps and the traffickers were arrested by Teknaf police station, added the press release.
During primary investigation, the refugees said they were from Ukhiya’s Kutupalong camp and were planning to flee to Malaysia, crossing the ocean on trawlers. Everyday, large numbers of Rohingya refugees from the Ukhiya and Teknaf camps are risking their lives to flee to Malaysia via the Bay of Bengal. Even though law enforcement agencies are catching them in the act, a significant number are getting away and managing to reach their destination.
With regard to the Rohingyas Bangladesh is caught between a rock and a hard place. We may have taken them in on humanitarian grounds, but the continued impasse over their repatriation to Myanmar has left us in the lurch. The Myanmar government must be clapping their hands in glee at uprooting so many Rohingyas from Myanmar. They must be even happier that no Rohingya wants to go back as they have been deprived of the most basic of freedoms and the Myanmar government is in no hurry to give them the guarantees necessary for a safe repatriation.
They deal with a crisis as Rohingya is simply beyond the capacity and competence of our government yet our government was enthusiastic in welcoming them as advised by wise bureaucrats efficient in misguiding the government now being exposed as failure in every sphere of the government. What was the expectation of these disastrously wise advisers is not known to us. May be to make us mother of humanity. But the tragedy is that the government is fully ineffective in mobilising foreign opining for effective aid for the refugees. The government has totally failed to give leadership to bring to bear strong international pressure on the government of Myanmar.
The image of the country is sullied pathetically for the pathetic life of the Rohingya refugees. The intention was not to make lives of the refugees so miserable that they are desperate to escape the tragic life in the camps of Bangladesh. We have a foreign minister who is in search of husband-wife relationship in foreign affairs. Please order the foreign minister to demonstrate his diplomatic competence on Rohingya crisis. He is needed only to accompany the Prime Minister in trips abroad, private or official. Everybody in the government unfortunately thinks he does not have to prove success to make the government successful.
