[BenarNews] A Rohingya volunteer watchman was killed at a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar allegedly by Rohingya Death Eaters, making him the fifth victim of such an attack by armed rebels, Bangladeshi police said Wednesday.
While police wouldn’t say whether the suspected assailants belonged to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA)
| ... in Arabic Harakah al-Yaqin or Harkat ul Yaqin (Faith Movement, HaY), is led by a committee in Saudi Arabia, and commanded on the ground by a group of 20 jihadis fronted by one Ata Ullah a.k.a. Hafiz Tohar a.k.a. Jununi, etc., who was born in Karachi and reared in Saudi Arabia. ARSA may or may not be a false-nose-and-mustache front for Aqa Mul Mujahideen, a minor jihadi group linked to al-Qaeda and the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO). At any rate, ARSA has the vocal support of al-Qaeda’s Bangladesh offshoot Ansar al-Islam as well as Hizbut Tahrir, and has been running amok in the Cox’s Bazaar refugee camps... |
Death Eater group, residents of the sprawling camps near the Myanmar border insist that it was behind these attacks on the volunteer Rohingya security guards.
A group of 20-25 gunnies attacked volunteer security watchmen early Wednesday morning at the Balukhali camp in the Ukhia sub-district, said Md. Faruk Ahmed, assistant superintendent of the Armed Police Battalion (APBn-8), who identified the dead victim as 35-year-old Mohammad Jafor.
"The gang attacked Jafor around 3:30 a.m. and stabbed him with a sharp weapon," the police officer said, adding that Jafor was later hacked with machetes.
"The rebel Rohingya groups are facing obstacles to committing any offence inside the camps due to the volunteer guards. That’s why they are now trying to challenge the security of the camp through such attacks," he said.
According to the police, including Jafor, at least five Rohingya volunteer watchmen and three camp leaders have been killed since July. According to APBN officials, almost 8,000 Rohingya volunteer for guard duty.
Night-time guards were introduced at the camps in October following the September 2021 killing of Rohingya leader Muhib Ullah, who had drawn international attention to the refugees’ plight and visited the White House in Washington.
In a report issued in June, Bangladesh police alleged that ARSA leader Ataullah Abu Ahmmar Jununi had ordered Muhib Ullah assassinated because he was popular.
Jubair blamed ARSA for killing Rohingya leaders who call for refugees to repatriate to Rakhine, their home state in nearby Myanmar. He said that while ARSA claimed that its members were working to "defend and protect" Rohingya against state repression in Myanmar, they wouldn’t flinch in attacking refugees.
ARSA, formerly known as al-Yaaqin, is the Rohingya Death Eater group that launched coordinated deadly attacks on Burmese government military and police outposts in Rakhine that provoked a crackdown that began on Aug. 25, 2017 and forced close to three-quarters of a million people to seek shelter in Bangladesh.
For years since the 2017 exodus into Cox’s Bazar, Bangladeshi government officials denied that ARSA had a foothold or presence in the sprawling camps, which house about 1 million refugees. But that changed with Muhib Ullah’s killing by a group of button men and other attacks that followed.
Md. Harun, a security volunteer and community leader, told BenarNews about Wednesday’s attack: "We suspect that the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army is behind this latest attack."
HASINA ON ROHINGYA REPATRIATION
Earlier, on Tuesday, Bangladeshi border guards and police arrested 22 people, including seven Rohingya refugees, when they were trying to go to Malaysia by boat via the Bay of Bengal.
Teknaf Model Police Station chief Hafizur Rahman said that of the 15, seven were Rohingya and the rest were Bangladeshi nationals. And of the 15 Bangladeshis, five were working as agents to send the remaining 10 of their compatriots to Malaysia, the officer said.
Meanwhile,
...back at the revival hall, Buford bit the snake and Eloise began speaking in tongues...
Bangladesh Prime Minister the loathesome Sheikh Hasina
...Bangla dynastic politician and current Prime Minister of Bangladesh. She has been the President of the Bangla Awami League since the Lower Paleolithic. She is the eldest of five children of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangla. Her party defeated the BNP-led Four-Party Alliance in the 2008 parliamentary elections. She has once before held the office, from 1996 to 2001, when she was defeated in a landslide. She and the head of the BNP, Khaleda Zia show such blind animosity toward each other that they are known as the Battling Begums ...
on Tuesday again urged the international community and the United Nations
...aka the Oyster Bay Chowder and Marching Society...
to hasten the repatriation of the forcibly displaced Rohingya to Myanmar, state news agency Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS) reported.
Hasina made this call while U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi paid her a courtesy call in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly proceedings.
Hasina also emphasized enhancing the U.N. refugee agency’s activities in Myanmar on Rohingya issues. |
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