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Nearly 300,000 Bangladeshis in Emergency Shelters after Floods

People carrying relief materials wade through flood waters in Feni, in south-eastern Bangladesh, on August 24, 2024. (Photo by Munir Uz Zaman / AFP)
People carrying relief materials wade through flood waters in Feni, in south-eastern Bangladesh, on August 24, 2024. (Photo by Munir Uz Zaman / AFP)
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Nearly 300,000 Bangladeshis in Emergency Shelters after Floods

People carrying relief materials wade through flood waters in Feni, in south-eastern Bangladesh, on August 24, 2024. (Photo by Munir Uz Zaman / AFP)
People carrying relief materials wade through flood waters in Feni, in south-eastern Bangladesh, on August 24, 2024. (Photo by Munir Uz Zaman / AFP)

Nearly 300,000 Bangladeshis were taking refuge in emergency shelters Saturday from floods that inundated vast areas of the low-lying South Asian country, disaster officials said.
The floods were triggered by heavy monsoon rains and have killed at least 42 people in Bangladesh and India since the start of the week, many in landslides, AFP said.
"My house is completely inundated," Lufton Nahar, 60, told AFP from a relief shelter in Feni, one of the worst-hit districts near the border with India's Tripura state.
"Water is flowing above our roof. My brother brought us here by boat. If he hadn't, we would have died."
The nation of 170 million people is crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers and has seen frequent floods in recent decades.
Monsoon rains cause widespread destruction every year but climate change is shifting weather patterns and increasing the number of extreme weather events.
Highways and rail lines were damaged between the capital Dhaka and the main port city of Chittagong, making access to badly flooded districts difficult and disrupting business activity.
The flooding also comes just weeks after a student-led revolution toppled its government.
Among the worst affected areas is Cox's Bazar, a district home to around a million Rohingya refugees from neighboring Myanmar.
Tripura state disaster agency official Sarat Kumad Das told AFP that 24 people had been killed on the Indian side of the border since Monday.
Another 18 had been killed in Bangladesh, according to disaster management ministry secretary Md Kamrul Hasan.
"285,000 people are living in emergency shelters," he said, adding that 4.5 million people in total had been affected.
- Recovering from unrest -
When the floods hit, Bangladesh was recovering from weeks of civil unrest that culminated in the August 5 toppling of autocratic ex-leader Sheikh Hasina.
With an interim government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus still finding its feet, ordinary Bangladeshis have been crowdfunding relief efforts.
They have been organized by the same students who led the protests that sparked the ouster of Hasina, who remains in India after fleeing Dhaka.
Crowds visited Dhaka University on Friday to offer cash donations as students loaded rice sacks and crates of bottled water onto vehicles for areas affected by the deluge.
Much of Bangladesh is made up of deltas where the great Himalayan rivers, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, wind towards the sea after coursing through India.
Several tributaries of the two transnational rivers were still overflowing.
However, forecasts showed rain was likely to ease in the coming days.

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UN Rights Chief Raises Alarm about Myanmar's Rohingya Civilians Trapped by Fighting

Pro-democracy guerrillas and ethnic minority armed forces, including the Arakan Army, have been battling to oust the country’s military rulers since they seized power in 2021 from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. - The AP
Pro-democracy guerrillas and ethnic minority armed forces, including the Arakan Army, have been battling to oust the country’s military rulers since they seized power in 2021 from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. - The AP
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UN Rights Chief Raises Alarm about Myanmar's Rohingya Civilians Trapped by Fighting

Pro-democracy guerrillas and ethnic minority armed forces, including the Arakan Army, have been battling to oust the country’s military rulers since they seized power in 2021 from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. - The AP
Pro-democracy guerrillas and ethnic minority armed forces, including the Arakan Army, have been battling to oust the country’s military rulers since they seized power in 2021 from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. - The AP

The UN's human rights chief joined a chorus of concern Friday for members of Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya ethnic minority after many were reported killed in recent fighting between the military government and the Arakan Army, an armed ethnic rebel group.

According to a statement from the Geneva office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, he “expressed grave alarm and raised profound concerns about the sharply deteriorating situation across Myanmar, particularly in Rakhine State where hundreds of civilians have reportedly been killed while trying to flee the fighting.”

It said his agency had documented that ”both the military and the Arakan Army, which now controls most of the townships in Rakhine, have committed serious human rights violations and abuses against the Rohingya, including extrajudicial killings, some involving beheadings, abductions, forced recruitment, indiscriminate bombardments of towns and villages using drones and artillery, and arson attacks.”

The statement cited an Aug. 5 attack along the Naf River bordering Bangladesh, when “dozens were reportedly killed, including by armed drones,” but said it was unclear who was responsible.

At the time, The Associated Press reported that at least 150 Rohingya may have been killed by artillery and drone attacks, and cited survivors as saying they believed the attacks were carried out by the Arakan Army.

The group, which is the military wing of the state’s Buddhist Rakhine ethnic group, denied responsibility for the attack on Rohingya fleeing the fighting in the town of Maungdaw, which the Arakan Army has been trying to seize from the army. However, more accounts have since surfaced placing the blame on the group.

Pro-democracy guerrillas and ethnic minority armed forces, including the Arakan Army, have been battling to oust the country’s military rulers since they seized power in 2021 from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

However, the fighting in Rakhine has raised fears of a revival of organized violence against members of the Rohingya minority.

In 2017, a military counter-insurgency campaign drove at least 740,000 members of their community to Bangladesh for safety. Almost all still remain there in overcrowded refugee camps, unable to return home because of the continuing instability. International courts are investigating whether the 2017 action by the army constituted genocide.

Ahead of the seventh anniversary Sunday of the flight of the Rohingya to escape the counter-insurgency, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on all parties fighting in the country to end the violence and protect civilians, his spokesman said Friday.

The UN chief said around 1 million Rohingya are presently sheltering in Bangladesh — and over 130,000 more across the region — “without immediate prospects to return,” spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

Many Rohingya have lived in Myanmar for generations, but face widespread prejudice and are generally denied citizenship and other basic rights in the Buddhist-majority country.

“Despite the world saying ‘never again’ we are once more witnessing killings, destruction and displacement in Rakhine,” said Türk's statement.

Amnesty International on Wednesday said recent attacks on the Rohingya ”bear a terrifying resemblance to the atrocities of August 2017.”

“Rohingya civilians are now caught in the middle of intensifying conflict in Rakhine State,” said its Myanmar researcher Joe Freeman, adding that the Myanmar military “has forcefully conscripted Rohingya to fight on its side.”

Freeman urged Myanmar’s military to ”immediately end their renewed campaign of violence and refrain from unlawful attacks on civilians.”

New York-base Human Rights Watch last week also raised the alarm about violence in Rakhine.

”Both sides are using hate speech, attacks on civilians, and massive arson to drive people from their homes and villages, raising the specter of ethnic cleansing,” said the group's Asia director, Elaine Pearson.

A joint statement from Rohingya support groups Friday estimated that at least 200 Rohingya were killed on Aug. 5 in what it called “the Naf River Massacre,” and also blamed the Arakan Army.

The Rohingya left in Maungdaw are trapped in intense fighting and “in urgent need of international protection and humanitarian assistance,” said the statement, endorsed by more than 100 activist groups.