Cox's Bazar to Bhashan Char: Third batch of Rohingya refugees sailed
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Dhaka, Jan 30: The third batch of Rohingya refugees living in camps at Cox’s Bazar district has sailed for relocation to the newly developed facility at the Bhashan Char island in Bangladesh, on Jan 29. A total of 1778 refugees left for Bhashan char island in four navy ships from Chattogram port. In the earlier two rounds, close to 3500 Rohingya refugees have already been sent to the Bhashan Char facility. The relocation to Bhashan Char was started on Dec 4, 2020.
The Bhashan Char island is about 24 km from the land point at Hatiya and 52 km from Patenga, which takes about 3-4 hours to cover by ship. According to Bangladesh Navy commander Mozammel Haque, earlier the refugees were to be brought to Chattogram from the Cox’s Bazar camps on Thursday evening. The Navy officer said that the fourth batch of Rohingyas is to be sent to Bhashan char on Jan 30. Bangladesh has maintained that the refugees are being relocated to the newly developed facility voluntarily as the camps at Cox’s Bazaar are over crowded.
Bhashan Char is an uninhabited island where the Bangladesh govt has built shelter houses for more than one lakh Rohingya refugees at an estimated cost of Tk 2,300 crore under its Ashrayan 3 project. The environmentalists say that the Bhashan Char falls in an ecologically fragile area prone to floods, erosion and cyclones. However, the Bangladesh govt insists that the location is safe with adequate safety measures like embankments and cyclone shelters built on the island for the refugees.
Currently more than a million Rohingya are living in refugee camps in Bangladesh after fleeing the military crackdown in the Rakhine province of Myanmar in August 2017.