Densely populated Bangladesh has seen an influx of more than 620,000 Rohingya to its southern-most district of Cox’s Bazar, fleeing violence in neighbouring Myanmar, since August.
This week, it approved a $280 million plan to develop the low-lying Bhashan Char island to temporarily house some of them until they can go home.
The Bay of Bengal island, also known as Thenger Char, only emerged from the silt off Bangladesh’s delta coast about 11 years ago.
Two hours by boat from the nearest settlement, the island has no roads or buildings and it regularly floods during the rough seas of the June-September rainy season.
When the sea is calm, pirates roam the waters in the vicinity to kidnap fishermen for ransom.
“We can’t keep such a large number of people in this small area of Cox’s Bazar where their presence is having a devastating effect on the situation on the ground environmentally, population wise and economically,” H.T. Imam, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s political adviser, told Reuters on Thursday.
“So, as quickly as we can shift at least some of the burden over to Bhashan Char, that will minimise the problem.”
Rohingya have fled repression in Buddhist-majority Myanmar several times since the 1970s, and almost one most million of them live in crowded camps in Cox’s Bazar.
Mainly Muslim Bangladesh has said it aims to move about 100,000 refugees to the island.
Some aid officials speculate that by raising the island plan, Bangladesh could be trying to put pressure on the international community to find a better solution to the crisis.
But Imam, who holds the rank of cabinet minister, has denied any such tactic.
‘HUGE PROJECT’
He said the navy had started work on developing the island, money for which will come from the government.
Bangladesh, however, would need financial and other help from aid agencies to move the refugees to the island, he said.
“There are some organisations which have assured help but I won’t specify who they are,” Imam said.
“It’s a huge project and includes the development of livestock. They will be given cattle, they will be given land, they will be given houses. They will raise their livestock, there will be other vocations that will be created.”
Humanitarian agencies, however, have criticised the plan since it was first floated in 2015.
“Having opened its doors to more than 600,000 Rohingya over the past three months, the Bangladesh government now risks undermining the protection of the Rohingya and squandering the international goodwill it has earned,” said Biraj Patnaik, Amnesty International’s South Asia Director, referring to the plan to move people to the island.
“In its desperation to see the Rohingya leave the camps and ultimately return to Myanmar, it is putting their safety and well-being at risk.”
Myanmar and Bangladesh signed an accord last week on terms for the return of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya, though rights groups have expressed doubts about Myanmar following through on the agreement and have called for independent observers for any repatriation.
There are concerns about protection for Rohingya from further violence if and when they go home, and about a path to resolving their legal status - most are stateless - and whether they would be allowed to return to their old homes.
Imam said Bangladesh was working on those issues but did not give details.
“In diplomacy, there are a lot of things that happen but then you don’t pronounce them publicly,” he said. “A lot of back-door diplomatic work is being done. People are involved at the highest level.”
Russia urges India to line up behind China's Belt and Road initiative
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Russia threw its weight behind China’s massive Belt and Road plan to build trade and transport links across Asia and beyond, suggesting to India on Monday that it find a way to work with Beijing on the signature project.
India is strongly opposed to an economic corridor that China is building in Pakistan that runs through disputed Kashmir as part of the Belt and Road initiative.
India was the only country that stayed away from a May summit hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping to promote the plan to build railways, ports and power grids in a modern-day recreation of the Silk Road.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said New Delhi should not let political problems deter it from joining the project, involving billions of dollars of investment, and benefiting from it.
Lavrov was speaking in the Indian capital after a three-way meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj at which, he said, India’s reservations over the Chinese project were discussed.
“I know India has problems, we discussed it today, with the concept of One Belt and One Road, but the specific problem in this regard should not make everything else conditional to resolving political issues,” he said.
Russia, all the countries in central Asia, and European nations had signed up to the Chinese project to boost economic cooperation, he said.
“Those are the facts,” he said. “India, I am 100 percent convinced, has enough very smart diplomats and politicians to find a way which would allow you to benefit from this process.”
The comments by Russia, India’s former Cold War ally, reflected the differences within the trilateral grouping formed 15 years ago to challenge U.S.-led dominance of global affairs.
But substantial differences between India and China, mainly over long-standing border disputes, have snuffed out prospects of any real cooperation among the three.
India, in addition, has drawn closer to the United States in recent years, buying weapons worth billions of dollars to replace its largely Soviet-origin military.
Swaraj said the three countries had very productive talks on economic issues and the fight against terrorism.
Putin wants to work with Iran and Turkey to kick-start Syrian peace process - agencies
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin told Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Monday he wanted to work with Iran and Turkey to kick-start the Syrian peace process, Russian news agencies reported.
Putin was also cited as telling Assad he hoped that it would be possible to launch the work of the Syrian Congress on National Dialogue and that he would discuss the matter in forthcoming meetings with the presidents of Egypt and Turkey.
Prominent Australian opposition lawmaker quits over claims of China links
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Prominent Australian opposition Senator Sam Dastyari said on Tuesday he would resign from parliament after a series of allegations emerged about his links with Chinese-aligned interests in Australia.
Relations between Australia and China have become strained since Canberra announced last week it would ban foreign political donations as part of a crackdown aimed at preventing external influence in domestic politics.
In announcing the ban, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull specifically singled out China, citing “disturbing reports about Chinese influence”.
China hit back, with the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily describing media reports about Chinese interference as “racist” and “paranoid”.
Dastyari, widely viewed as a rising star of the centre-left Labor opposition party, has been under fire since domestic media reported he had sought to encourage the party’s deputy leader not to meet a Chinese pro-democracy activist opposed to Beijing’s rule in Hong Kong in 2015.
“Today, after much reflection, I’ve decided that the best service I can render to the federal parliamentary Labor Party is to not return to the Senate in 2018,” Dastyari told reporters in Sydney.
The latest allegations came just days after Turnbull on Monday told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Dastyari had warned Chinese political donor Huang Xiangmo that his phone might be tapped.
Dastyari had already quit some senior Labor positions after a tape surfaced of him appearing to endorse China’s contentious expansion in disputed areas of the South China Sea, against his party’s platform. The tape showed him standing next to Huang.
Turnbull accused the opposition Labor Party of “failing to put Australia first”, rhetoric that analysts said could widen divisions between Canberra and Beijing.
“The row has erupted and it has claimed a political scalp,” said Euan Graham, director, international security programme at the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank.
“China could retaliate through non-official sanctions such as reduced tourist numbers or through buying of goods elsewhere.”
China bought A$93 billion ($69.95 billion) of Australian goods and services last year, making it easily the country’s biggest trade partner.
But growing trade ties are only one side of a delicate balancing act for Australia, whose unshakeable security relationship with the United States has limited how cosy it gets with China.
The recent political focus on Dastyari’s China links has been a welcome reprieve for Turnbull, who is suffering a slump in popularity in a country where three prime ministers have been ousted by their own parties since 2010.
The fragility of his centre-right government will be tested at the weekend, where the Dec. 16 by-election for the blue-ribbon conservative electorate of Bennelong in Sydney could see Turnbull again lose his majority in parliament should Labour win.
Bangladesh police looking for family, associates of New York bombing suspect
DHAKA (Reuters) - Officials in Bangladesh are trying to track down the extended family and any known associates of Akayed Ullah, a Bangladeshi man U.S. authorities say set off a homemade pipe bomb in a crowded New York City commuter hub on Monday.
“Police are looking for his family, but so far they’ve not been able to trace them,” said Abul Khair Nadim, the Chair of Musapur Union council, a local government body in the Chittagong division in southern Bangladesh, where Ullah’s family originally lived.
Bangladesh’s police chief told Reuters late on Monday that 27-year-old Ullah had no criminal record in his home country, which he last visited in September.
Ullah lived with his mother, sister and two brothers in Brooklyn and was a green card holder, said Shameem Ahsan, consul general of Bangladesh in New York.
Ahmad Ullah, a relative of Ullah, who Reuters tracked down on Tuesday, said his cousin’s father had moved to the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka with his family many years ago.
He said Ullah’s father had passed away about five years ago, and that Ullah had been through a normal public school education in Bangladesh before moving to the United States.
Ullah, who had a homemade bomb strapped to his body, set off an explosion in an underground pedestrian corridor between New York’s Times Square and the Port Authority Bus Terminal at rush hour, injuring himself and three others in what New York Mayor Bill de Blasio called an attempted terrorist attack.
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