Fire in Rohingya refugee camp: hundreds of homeless Taiwan accuses China of intimidation through balloon flights

A fire at an overcrowded camp for Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh left at least 2,500 people homeless overnight. About 500 huts were destroyed before firefighters extinguished the fire after more than three hours on Sunday morning, a police spokesman told the German news agency. There were no reports of injuries or deaths.

About a million Rohingya live in the world’s largest concentration of refugee camps in the Cox’s Bazaar district of southeastern Bangladesh. Hundreds of thousands fled their Buddhist-majority homeland of Myanmar in 2017 when the military launched an offensive against the Muslim minority. The UN describes their persecution as genocide. The poor country of Bangladesh still hopes that they will return to Myanmar. However, so far several attempts at repatriation have failed due to concerns about the safety of the refugees. They had lost their citizenship under a law passed by Myanmar’s military junta in 1983.

Fires are constantly breaking out in the Rohingya camps and the affected people are then forced to rebuild their huts, which are often made of bamboo and tarpaulin, with the support of aid organizations. They often live there without prospects or hope for a better future. (sda/dpa)