Thousands of Rohingya who took refuge in Bangladesh after fleeing violence in Myanmar have returned home because of a Bangladeshi plan to house them on an uninhabited flood-prone island, community leaders said yesterday.
Nearly 73,000 Rohingya refugees have entered Bangladesh since last October, when government forces in Myanmar unleashed a bloody crackdown on the Muslim minority. Many told horrific stories of villages being burned and women gang-raped.
Most headed to the already overcrowded refugee camps of Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh's main tourist resort district which borders Myanmar.
The influx led Dhaka to resurrect a controversial plan to relocate refugees to an undeveloped island in the Bay of Bengal.Community leaders told AFP more than 5,000 Rohingya had now returned to the Buddhist-majority nation despite the risk of persecution. "They chose to die by bullets than to be killed by nature," community leader Noor Hafiz said. "People became very concerned after they learnt about the relocation plan. We heard the island submerges during the monsoon. Now we can only hope the situation back home is better." The Bay of Bengal is frequently hit by cyclones. Rights groups have dismissed the plan to populate the island of Thengar Char with refugees as "ridiculous".
Last week it began a Rohingya headcount as part of its relocation campaign after seeking international support for the plan. Bangladesh says some 400,000 Rohingya are now living in squalid conditions at refugee camps in the country, although most predate the recent unrest in Myanmar.
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