Bangladesh has yet again shelved a controversial plan to relocate some 100,000 Rohingya refugees to a flood-prone island in the Bay of Bengal, a minister said Wednesday.
Authorities have long sought to relocate some of the country’s million-plus Rohingya population to Bhashan Char, despite warnings the silty strip of land was prone to violent and potentially deadly monsoon storms.
The move would take some pressure off the overcrowded border camps home to huge numbers of the persecuted and stateless Muslim minority, most of whom fled neighbouring Myanmar in 2017 after a brutal military crackdown.
But rights groups say that some refugees had been coerced into agreeing to relocation and the plan has been staunchly opposed by the Rohingya community at large.
Junior disaster management minister Enamur Rahman said Bangladesh would increase its focus on diplomatic talks aimed at returning the refugees home.
“The relocation plan has been postponed,” he told AFP, adding that there had been “much progress” in repatriation discussions with Myanmar with China acting as intermediary.
Bangladesh and Myanmar have already signed a repatriation deal to send back some Rohingya to their homeland — but safety fears mean very few have agreed to return.
Thousands are suspected to have been killed in Myanmar during the 2017 Rohingya crackdown and refugees brought reports of widespread rape and arson by soldiers and ethnic Rakhine mobs. AFP Islamabad: Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has been declared an “absconder” by the government for violating the bail requirements by not presenting his medical report from his doctors in London, according to a media report on Wednesday.
Sharif, 70, left for London in November last for treatment after the Lahore High Court allowed him to go abroad on medical grounds for four weeks.
According to Sharif’s physician, the three-time prime minister is suffering from complex multi-vessel coronary artery disease and substantial ischemic and threatened myocardium for which he is due to undergo surgery.
The government on Tuesday decided not to extend the bail of Sharif and declared him an “absconder” for violating the bail requirements by not presenting his medical report before a board formed on the order of the Islamabad High Court (IHC), Dawn Newspaper reported.
The decisions were taken at a meeting of the federal Cabinet presided by Prime Minister Imran Khan.
“After Nawaz Sharif failed to submit his medical report of any hospital in London, the medical board rejected a medical certificate sent by him and (the government) declared him an absconder,” Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Information Firdous Ashiq Awan said at a post-Cabinet meeting press conference.
“From today Nawaz Sharif is an absconder according to the law of land and if he does not return to the country he will be declared a proclaimed offender,” Awan said.