United Nations, Jan 22: Humanitarian conditions in camps hosting Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are set to worsen in the next few months, a human rights investigator has told, while also raising concerns about a plan to repatriate the fleeing minority back to Myanmar.
In an interview from Balukhali refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Yanghee Lee, a UN special rapporteur who was banned from visiting Myanmar, said that with Bangladesh’s monsoon season approaching, the crammed camps “will be witnessing landslides and we may see a huge number of casualties”.
Lee also warned of the possibility of an “outbreak of diseases” that would spread due to heavy rainfall, which may become “impossible to contain from spreading elsewhere”.
The UN envoy was to visit Myanmar in January to assess the state of human rights across the country, including in Rakhine state, where a brutal military crackdown has sent more than 650,000 minority Rohingya fleeing into neighbouring Bangladesh.
People fleeing the violence have told of a systematic campaign of mass killings, rape and arson.
(UNI)
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