Part of: Prelims and GS II – International relations
Context Bangladesh is planning to send more than 80,000 Rohingya refugees to a remote island- Bhasan Char– in the Bay of Bengal after sealing an agreement for the United Nations to provide help.
Some 19,000 of the Muslim refugees from Myanmar have already relocated to the island, despite doubts raised by aid groups.
Background
Bhasan Char is an island specifically developed to accommodate 1,00,000 of the 1 million Rohingya who have fled from neighbouring Myanmar.
Human rights groups have criticised the move.
Who are Rohingyas?
They are an Ethnic group, mostly Muslims. They were not granted full citizenship by Myanmar.
They were classified as “resident foreigners or associate citizens”.
Ethnically they are much closer to Indo-Aryan people of India and Bangladesh than to the Sino-Tibetans of Myanmar.
Described by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as “one of, if not the, most discriminated people in the world”.
