Monsoon Season Poses Huge Threat to Rohingya

For the 700,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled to Southeast Bangladesh in the past nine months, the approaching monsoon season poses the most serious threat since they were violently expelled from Myanmar, according to reports.

News ID: 70405

Date: 28 May 2018 - 14:38

TEHRAN (Defapress)- Close to one million of the stateless Muslim minority live in the Cox's Bazar district, but the new arrivals, stranded on unstable hills in bamboo and plastic shacks, are especially vulnerable, Asia News reported.

According to the Bangladesh Meteorological Department, the rains typically begin in April and peak in July.

The death of a young girl in a torrent of mud and rock this month has already heightened fears of a greater tragedy.

“We could literally have lives lost as people slide down hillsides and valleys are flooded with water,” Kevin J. Allen, the head of the United Nations refugee agency’s operations in Cox’s Bazar, said, adding that “they could face yet again another emergency, this time driven by mother nature”.

Additionally, the Cox’s Bazar district, where the refugee camps are mostly concentrated, has been battered by cyclones for three years in a row and has been beset by astonishing devastation in the past.

Abdur Rahman, the acting district administrator of Cox’s Bazar, said mosques and community centers in the district could shelter only 150,000 people at times of emergency, adding that “but if there is a big cyclone, and all these people need relocating, there is not a system for that yet. It is not possible to shift one million people".

The Rohingya refugees have fled a systematic campaign of violence in their native Myanmar, where the majority-Buddhist government quietly approved a military crackdown on the Muslims. Thousands were killed and hundreds of thousands were uprooted in that campaign.

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