BANGKOK — A human rights group is calling on Bangladesh’s government to abandon plans to relocate Rohingya refugees to a small, uninhabited island said to be at severe risk of serious flooding.
Human Rights Watch said in a report Monday that international experts have identified six sites near the existing camp housing about 700,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar that could provide better and safer conditions and could accommodate more than a quarter of a million people.
The New York-based organization said Bangladesh’s government plans to move 100,000 people to Bhasan Char island very soon, but warns that – quite apart to its susceptibility to inundation – its isolation and the lack of assurance of freedom of movement would turn it into a de facto “immigration detention center.”
