UN special envoy meets Bangladeshi officials as pressure to repatriate Rohingya grows

Rohingya refugees gather to mark the second anniversary of the exodus at the Kutupalong camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, on August 25, 2019. (REUTERS/File Photo)
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Updated 25 August 2022
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UN special envoy meets Bangladeshi officials as pressure to repatriate Rohingya grows

  • Noeleen Heyzer’s trip to Bangladesh follows her visit to Myanmar
  • Bangladeshi PM called on UN last week to start repatriation of Rohingya refugees

DHAKA: The UN Special Envoy for Myanmar Noeleen Heyzer met with Bangladeshi officials on Wednesday amid growing pressure for the repatriation of Rohingya refugees.

Although Bangladesh is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, it has been hosting and providing humanitarian support to 1.2 million Rohingya Muslims, most of whom fled neighboring Myanmar during a military crackdown in 2017.

A majority of the refugees live in squalid camps in Cox’s Bazar district, a coastal region in the country’s southeast and the world’s largest refugee settlement.

Despite multiple attempts from Bangladesh over the past years, a UN-backed repatriation process has been failing to take off.

Heyzer arrived in Bangladesh on Monday, after her visit to Myanmar last week.

“The UN envoy to Myanmar visited the Rohingya camps at Cox’s Bazar on Tuesday. She witnessed the facilities over there that Bangladesh has provided to the Rohingya refugees,” Shamsud Douza Nayan, additional commissioner of Bangladesh’s Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commission, told Arab News.

“Today’s meeting was to discuss the issues about the well-being of the Rohingyas.”

Heyzer inspected facilities provided to Rohingya refugees in the camps, where no work is available, sanitation is poor and access to education limited.

Her arrival in Bangladesh follows the visit of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, whom Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina called upon to repatriate the Rohingya.

When Bachelet asked Hasina to increase opportunities for education and work for the Rohingya in Bangladesh, the prime minister said such initiatives would not be possible to implement in Cox’s Bazar but could be pursued in Bhasan Char, a remote camp island in the Bay of Bengal, where Bangladeshi authorities have shifted over 20,000 refugees since December 2020 to take pressure off Cox’s Bazar.

Before and during the relocation process, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and rights groups criticized the camp island project on the grounds of safety and Bhasan Char’s livability, as the island, 68 km from the mainland, is prone to severe weather and flooding.

As international financial support for hosting the Rohingya has decreased since 2020, the pressure on Bangladesh has been also economic, multiplying the challenges the developing country battered by the COVID-19 pandemic is already facing. Hosting Rohingya refugees costs Bangladesh an estimated $1.2 billion a year.

Security in Rohingya settlements has come under the spotlight in recent weeks after two refugee community leaders were shot dead earlier this month, reportedly by an insurgent group active in the camps, which has been accused of killing scores of opponents and local community leaders since last year.

Reports of criminal organizations using refugees as drug traffickers have also been on the rise.

In an appeal to donors, the UN refugee agency said on Tuesday that international support for Rohingyas is “well short of needs.”

The UNHCR said its 2022 response plan sought $881 million for more than 1.4 million people, including Rohingya refugees and host communities, but so far was funded at only 49 percent.


’I have to pray’: fear, danger for paramedics in South Africa’s crime hotspots

Updated 8 sec ago
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’I have to pray’: fear, danger for paramedics in South Africa’s crime hotspots

  • The call came in just after 7:00 p.m. as the paramedics began the night shift: a man had been stabbed in the head with a glass bottle and was bleeding heavily
CAPE TOWN: The call came in just after 7:00 p.m. as the paramedics began the night shift: a man had been stabbed in the head with a glass bottle and was bleeding heavily.
The medical crew and their ambulance from Cape Town’s Emergency Medical Services (EMS) were only minutes away. But they could not respond until they had an armed police escort.
The Cape Flats, low-lying townships outside Cape Town, are hotspots for murder and gang violence in a country already plagued by one of the highest crime rates in the world.
The sprawling area of Philippi, where the wounded man lay bleeding in a shack, is among the most dangerous.
It is one of nine Red Zones in Cape Town where the EMS refuses to allow its medical crews to move without security cover.
“If it was up to me, I would go straight there,” said paramedic Mawethu Ntintini, 52, pacing the sidewalk outside the Philippi police station in his green reflective uniform.
“But we have to go through the police.”
Waiting inside the ambulance was Ntintini’s partner, Ntombikayisi Joko, who has narrowly escaped ambush while on duty and was robbed in 2021 while waiting for directions to a call-out.
“Every time I’m going out, I have to pray,” the 42-year-old mother told AFP.
“If we were going there by ourselves, we would be robbed,” Ntintini admitted.
They waited another 30 minutes before a police patrol car emerged to escort the ambulance 10 minutes down the road to a small shack of corrugated iron.

Anguished family members crowded at the wounded man’s bed were relieved to see the paramedics. “Sometimes we have to wait until the morning just because we live in a wrong place,” one said.
As the team worked, the police car’s flashing lights cast a blue glow on the dark street.
The man’s injuries, a deep cut to the arm and a bump on the head, were less severe than feared. Loaded into the ambulance, he arrived at the hospital at 8:45 pm, almost two hours after the call for help.
Joko recalled a time the police, overstretched and overburdened, could only free up an escort more than an hour after an emergency was issued for a woman in labor.
It was too late.
“It was a baby boy, he was so cute. The umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck,” she said.
“I was crying, because I knew that if I was there before, I would have helped that baby.”
Four of South Africa’s top five homicide hotspots last year were in the Cape Flats, according to police figures.
The Western Cape — one of nine provinces — recorded more than 12 people murdered every day, with the national average hovering around 75 a day.
The EMS demanded security escorts in 2015 when there was more than one assault a week on paramedics operating in the Cape Flats.
Incidents peaked in 2017 when nearly 90 attacks were recorded, ranging from verbal abuse and theft to hijackings and stabbings. In 2023, the latest available figure, there were 44 incidents.

Ambulance crews are soft targets for criminals looking to steal phones, money or medical equipment, said Pastor Craven Engel, who runs a gang violence prevention organization called Ceasefire.
He linked the violence to hardships imposed under apartheid, the previous government that espoused racial segregation and forced non-whites into bleak areas like Philippi, 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the city center.
“It started with the urban displacement, uprooting people, putting them into areas where there’s no economic development, no recreation, no sustainable livelihood,” Engel said.
With high unemployment and rampant poverty, “the resources are so depleted that people are now targeting the good guys,” he told AFP at his offices in Hanover Park, another Red Zone.
Medical crews working to save lives sometimes know the criminals who threaten them and might also, one day, need their assistance, said 32-year-old paramedic Inathi Jacob.
“You get angry,” she said. “But we don’t let them get us to the core. There are a lot of people who really need the services of EMS.”
Ntintini and Joko had just dropped the bleeding man at a hospital when the second “priority one” call of their night shift came in: an elderly man, recently recovered from a stroke, was unresponsive.
Driving to his house would take only five minutes but the ambulance could only leave 40 minutes later, sirens blaring as a police car escorted them down narrow, dark alleyways.

France ‘strongly’ condemns Israel’s Gaza conquest plan

Updated 4 min 54 sec ago
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France ‘strongly’ condemns Israel’s Gaza conquest plan

  • France’s foreign minister said on Tuesday that Paris “very strongly” condemns Israel’s new military campaign in the Gaza Strip

PARIS: France’s foreign minister said on Tuesday that Paris “very strongly” condemns Israel’s new military campaign in the Gaza Strip.
“It’s unacceptable,” Jean-Noel Barrot said in a radio interview, saying the Israeli government was “in violation of humanitarian law,” after its security cabinet approved a plan that an Israeli official said will entail “the conquest of the Gaza Strip and the holding of the territories.


Bangladesh’s ex-premier Khaleda Zia returns, adding pressure for elections

Updated 54 min 59 sec ago
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Bangladesh’s ex-premier Khaleda Zia returns, adding pressure for elections

  • Zia has been pressuring Bangladesh’s interim government to hold national election in December this year
  • Her physical presence in country has huge symbolic value for her party as ex-PM Hasina remains in exile

DHAKA, Bangladesh: Bangladesh’s ailing former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia returned to the country from London on Tuesday morning after four months of medical treatment, adding to pressure for its interim leaders to hold elections.

The South Asian country has been under a government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus since former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was ousted in a students-led mass uprising in August last year.

Zia, Hasina’s archrival, and her Bangladesh Nationalist Party have been pushing Yunus’ government to hold a national election in December to return the country to democratic rule.

Many welcomed Hasina’s overthrow as a chance to return to democratic elections, but suspicion and uncertainty have surfaced in recent months about the new government’s commitment to hold elections soon. It has said the next election will be held in either December or by June next year, depending on the extent of reforms in various sectors
Crowds gathered outside Dhaka’s main airport to welcome Zia.

Accompanied by her two daughters-in-law, Zia arrived on a special air ambulance arranged by Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who also arranged her transport to London in January. Zia suffers from various serious health conditions and she has not attended any public gatherings for many years. Her elder son, Tarique Rahman, leads the party as acting chief from exile in London.

Zia’s physical presence in the country has huge symbolic value for her party while Hasina is in exile in India.

Zia and Hasina have alternately ruled the country as prime ministers since 1991 when the country returned to a democracy after the ouster of authoritarian President H.M. Ershad.

Zia served the country as prime minister three times, twice for full five-year terms and once for just a few months.

Zia is the widow of former military chief-turned-president Ziaur Rahman, who was assassinated in 1981. Hasina is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who led Bangladesh’s independence struggle against Pakistan in 1971.


Trump official says Harvard banned from federal grants

Updated 14 min 46 sec ago
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Trump official says Harvard banned from federal grants

  • Harvard has drawn Trump’s ire by refusing to comply with his demands that it accept government oversight of its admissions, hiring practices and political slant.

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s education secretary said Monday that Harvard will no longer receive federal grants, escalating an ongoing battle with the prestigious university as it challenges the funding cuts in court.

The Trump administration has for weeks locked horns with Harvard and other higher education institutions over claims they tolerate anti-Semitism on their campuses — threatening their budgets, tax-exempt status and enrollment of foreign students.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon, in a letter sent to Harvard’s president and posted online, said that the university “should no longer seek GRANTS from the federal government, since none will be provided.”

She alleged that Harvard has “failed to abide by its legal obligations, its ethical and fiduciary duties, its transparency responsibilities, and any semblance of academic rigor.”

Harvard — routinely ranked among the world’s top universities — has drawn Trump’s ire by refusing to comply with his demands that it accept government oversight of its admissions, hiring practices and political slant.

That prompted the Trump administration to in mid-April freeze $2.2 billion in federal funding, with a total of $9 billion under review.

McMahon, a former wrestling executive, said that her letter “marks the end of new grants for the University.”

Harvard is the wealthiest US university with an endowment valued at $53.2 billion in 2024.

The latest move comes as Trump and his White House crack down on US universities on several fronts, justified as a reaction to what they say is uncontrolled anti-Semitism and a need to reverse diversity programs aimed at addressing historical oppression of minorities.

The administration has threatened funding freezes and other punishments, prompting concerns over declining academic freedom.

It has also moved to revoke visas and deport foreign students involved in the protests, accusing them of supporting Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose October 7, 2023 attack on Israel provoked the war.

Trump’s claims about diversity tap into long-standing conservative complaints that US university campuses are too liberal, shutting out right-wing voices and favoring minorities.


Ukraine’s drone attack on Moscow forces airports’ closure, officials say

Updated 06 May 2025
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Ukraine’s drone attack on Moscow forces airports’ closure, officials say

Russian air defense units destroyed a swarm of Ukrainian drones targeting Moscow for the second night in a row, prompting the closure of the capital’s airports, Russian officials said early on Tuesday.
Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that at least 19 Ukrainian drones were destroyed on their approach to Moscow “from different directions.”
“At the sites where fragments fell, there was no destruction or casualties,” Sobyanin wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “Specialists from the emergency services are working at the sites where the incidents occurred.”
Some of the debris had landed on one of the key highways leading into the city, he said.
Russia’s aviation watchdog Rosaviatsia said on Telegram it had halted flights at all four airports that serve Moscow. Airports in a number of regional cities were also closed.
On Tuesday, Russia’s air defense units destroyed four Ukrainian drones on their approach to Moscow, with no damage or injuries reported.
The war began more than three years ago when Russia invaded Ukraine, a move Moscow described as a special military operation. Since then, Kyiv has launched several drone attacks on Moscow. Its biggest attack in March killed three people.
There was no immediate comment from Kyiv about the latest drone attack. Ukraine says its drone attacks are aimed at destroying infrastructure key to Moscow’s overall war efforts and are in response to Russia’s continued assault on Ukrainian territory, including residential areas and energy infrastructure.