UN HUMAN RIGHTS CHIEF BEGINS FOUR-DAY VISIT TO ROHINGYA CAMPS IN BANGLADESH

Sun 14 August 2022:

Michelle Bachelet, the head of the UN’s human rights office, arrived in Bangladesh on Sunday for a four-day visit that will include a visit to the squalid camps where nearly a million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are housed.

The Myanmar army offensive against the predominantly Muslim minority in 2017 was the cause of the Rohingya exodus, and this month the UN’s highest court approved a groundbreaking case charging the Buddhist-majority country of genocide.

Bangladesh, the host country, grows impatient with the refugees’ refusal to return home five years later since Myanmar, a military-run country, has not provided assurances of their safety and legal rights.

Bangladesh, meanwhile, has come under fire for its own rights record under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, whom Bachelet will meet during her visit, as well as local activists.

Nine groups including Human Rights Watch said that Bachelet should “publicly call for an immediate end to serious abuses including extrajudicial killings, torture, and enforced disappearances” in Bangladesh.

In December the United States imposed sanctions on a notorious elite police unit and seven top security officers, including the national police chief, over gross human rights violations.

Under Hasina, security forces have killed thousands of people in staged shootouts, while hundreds of others, most of them from the opposition, have disappeared, activists say.

The government denies the allegations, and ahead of Bachelet’s visit Dhaka said in a statement that it would highlight its “sincere efforts to protect and promote human rights of the people”.

“Bangladesh strongly hopes that the Chief of UN human rights mechanism would witness by herself how the country is doing miracles to keep on track their development journey; integrating human rights into it,” it said.

Bachelet, 70, a former Chilean president, is due to step down at the end of the month.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

FOLLOW INDEPENDENT PRESS:

TWITTER (CLICK HERE)
https://twitter.com/IpIndependent