3 yıl önce

Scores of Rohingya arrested in Bangladesh over murder of community leader

Mohib Ullah was gunned down in late September in a refugee camp near the port city of Cox's Bazar.

Reuters

Around 730,000 Rohingya Muslims migrated to Bangladesh, fleeing violence in Myanmar after a military crackdown in August 2017.

Bangladesh police have arrested 172 Rohingya after a crackdown sparked by the murder of prominent community leader Mohib Ullah.

Naimul Haque, commander of the elite Armed Police Battalion (APB), said on Monday that the arrests took place in recent weeks.

Family and colleagues of Mohib Ullah blame Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) group for his murder, an allegation ARSA denies.

Among those arrested were 10 suspected of involvement in the killing, and another 114 others for declaring themselves ARSA members, Haque's unit said in a statement.

"Our drives against the miscreants in the camps will continue," the statement added.

Mohib Ullah was gunned down in late September in a refugee camp near the port city of Cox's Bazar, in a region home to over 700,000 members of the stateless Muslim minority who fled a 2017 military crackdown in Myanmar.

The 48-year-old teacher emerged as a respected advocate for the community but in the weeks before his assassination had been the target of death threats from ARSA.

Relocation of refugees

Police have also relocated more than 70 people, including the slain leader's family and relatives of seven people shot dead last month in an assault on an Islamic school - another attack blamed on the militants.

"All the families of the victims were terrified after these incidents," senior officer Kamran Hossain told AFP.

Nurul Islam, a Rohingya refugee whose son was killed in the school attack, said his family felt too afraid to remain in the camps.

"All Rohingya are unsafe from ARSA," he told AFP by phone. "They want to kill us, they want instability."

The UN refugee agency said it had assisted in moving the group to a safer location.

Bangladesh routinely denies that the insurgents operate in the refugee camps.

ARSA insurgents claim to be acting on the behalf of Myanmar's Rohingya.

They usually operate in Rakhine state in northern Myanmar.

The Myanmar government considers ARSA group a terrorist organisation and sees them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

SOURCE: TRTWorld and agencies