Thousands of people were left homeless after a fire destroyed parts of a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, police said on Sunday. According to Kamran Hossain, a spokesperson for the Armed Police Battalion, which heads security in the camp, “About 1,200 houses were burnt in the fire,” which “started at 4:40 pm and was brought under control at around 6:30 pm.”
Hossain told AFP that the fire started at Camp 16 and tore through shelters made of bamboo and tarpaulin, leaving more than 5,000 refugee residents homeless. According to Mohammed Shamsud Douza, a government official in charge of refugees, no cause for the blaze has yet been established and no immediate casualties have been reported.
Fires in Rohingya refugee camps are not an unusual occurrence. In the absence of laws explicitly recognising the governments’ obligations to secure the lives and liberties of the exiled community, the Rohingya are made to live in unsafe and squalid conditions, making them vulnerable to fires.
Last March, a fire in Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh left 15 dead, 400 missing, and about 50,000 homeless. Soon after the incident, another fire in April resulted in three deaths. More recently, there was a fire in a COVID-19 treatment centre for refugees in another refugee camp in the district last Sunday; no casualties were reported.
Massive fire in #Rohingya camps, it seems that there's no end to their misery. pic.twitter.com/XHYhK9LSq2
— Dr.Fozia Alvi (@AlviFozia) January 9, 2022
While Bangladesh has been commended for accepting the refugees, onlookers have expressed concern about the restrictions placed on the refugees and the safety of their living conditions.
Since 2017, Cox’s Bazaar, which houses 850,000 Rohingya Muslims and where the residents are already vulnerable to floods and cyclones, has reported 73 incidents of fire. In fact, just in the first three months of 2021, fires in Cox’s Bazaar have resulted in the death of 14 refugees on the flood-prone island.
Moreover, the country’s laws continue to remain resistant to acknowledging the Rohingya’s rights. Last week, Bangladeshi authorities bulldozed over 3,000 “illegal” Rohingya-run shops in Cox’s Bazaar, raising concern about the already dismal state of the refugees in the country.
Also Read: Why Are There so Many Fires in Rohingya Camps?
An international rights group activist quoted by Voice of America said that the demolitions are a part of the government’s pressure tactics to incentivise the refugees to shift to the Bhashan Char Island in the Bay of Bengal. Rights groups, including Amnesty International, have urged the Bangladeshi government to scrap its plans to shift the refugees to the island, citing safety concerns due to its vulnerability to floods and cyclones. Despite these requests, however, Dhaka maintains that it will rehouse 100,000 of the camps’ approximately one million Rohingya refugees on the island while it works on a long-term solution.
The Rohingya, an ethnic Muslim community, are largely based in Myanmar. The ongoing genocide against them since the 1970s, which peaked in 2017, has forced the community into refugee camps across the region, with little access to education, healthcare, or jobs.
Around one million Rohingya have sought refuge in neighbouring countries like Bangladesh. However, for decades now, both Bangladesh and Myanmar have refused to acknowledge them as citizens and each insists that they are “illegal immigrants” of the other, effectively rendering them stateless. The community has also been trying to gain refuge in India, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia for years.