Dhaka: Authorities in Bangladesh have sent more than 1,400 Rohingya Muslim refugees to a remote island in the Bay of Bengal on Saturday despite concerns about the risk of storms and floods lashing the site.
They are the newest addition to the roughly 3,500 Rohingya refugees from neighbouring Myanmar that Bangladesh has sent to the island of Bhasan Char since early December, from border camps where a million live in ramshackle huts.
“We are ready to receive the new arrivals,” Commodore Abdullah Al Mamun Chowdhury, the officer in charge of the island, told Reuters by telephone.
The island, which emerged from the sea just two decades ago, is several hours’ journey away from the southern port.
Five ships left with the Rohingya and their belongings after they were transferred from the camps to the nearby port city of Chittagong, he said.
Bangladesh on Friday moved 1,776 Rohingya to the island, which emerged from the sea just two decades ago and is several hours’ journey away from the southern port.
The Rohingya, a minority group who fled violence in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, are not allowed to move off the island without government permission.
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