Fire at Rohingya camps ‘planned sabotage’, Bangladesh panel says

 Officials say the March 5 blaze broke out in several places at the same time, proving it was a planned act.

A fire that left thousands of Rohingya refugees homeless in Bangladesh camps was a “planned act of sabotage”, says a panel investigating the blaze.

Nearly 2,800 shelters and more than 90 facilities, including hospitals and learning centres, were destroyed in the fire on March 5, leaving more than 12,000 people without shelter, officials said.

More than a million Rohingya live in tens of thousands of huts made of bamboo and thin plastic sheeting in camps in the border district of Cox’s Bazar, most having fled a military-led crackdown in Myanmar in 2017.

Two boys salvage a gas cylinder after the blaze at Balukhali Camp [File: Mahmud Hossain Opu/AP Photo]

“The fire was a planned act of sabotage,” senior district government official Abu Sufian, head of a seven-member probe committee, told Reuters news agency by phone from Cox’s Bazar on Sunday.

He said the blaze broke out in several places at the same time, proving it was a planned act. He said it was a deliberate attempt to establish supremacy inside the camps by community-based gangs. He did not name the groups.

“At least five places caught fire within a short period of time. […] The day before the fire, there were shootings and clashes over dominance in that camp. Some people in the camps restricted refugees from dousing it, allowing the fire to burn the shelters,” Sufian said.

Residents said the incident is a sign of a growing turf war between the gangs in the world’s largest refugee camp.

“We recommended further investigation by the law-enforcing agency to identify the groups behind the incident,” he said, adding that the report was based on input from 150 witnesses.

The panel also recommended the formation of a separate fire service unit for the Rohingya camps. Each block of Rohingya camps needs to be widened to accommodate fire service vehicles and the construction of water cisterns, and the camps should use less flammable materials in shelters, among other recommendations.

Refugees trying to salvage their belongings after the fire [File: Mahmud Hossain Opu/AP Photo]

Mohammed Rezuwan Khan, a refugee rights activist in the camp, said the fire “was not accidental, but intentional – set by one of the gangs”.

“The gangs, so-called freedom fighters, from within Rohingya have been taking advantage of our vulnerability … They don’t want us to survive peacefully as there are masterminds from overseas behind them,” he said.

Fires often break out in the crowded camp with its makeshift structures. A massive blaze in March 2021 killed at least 15 refugees and destroyed more than 10,000 homes.

Surging crime, difficult living conditions and bleak prospects for returning to Myanmar are driving more Rohingya to leave Bangladesh by boat for countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, putting their lives at risk.

United Nations data shows 348 Rohingya are thought to have died at sea in 2022 – one of the deadliest years for the mostly Muslim refugees.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

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Protesters pushed back from Sudan’s presidential palace

 Hundreds of protesters have taken to the streets in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, today aiming to reach the republican palace, the head of the state’s office. They were met with volleys of tear gas fired by the police and prevented from reaching their goal.

Young women and men carried banners showing the names of those who had been killed during recent protests against continued military rule. Other placards said the protests would continue until civilian rule is achieved.

Tuesday’s protests came under the slogan of “the revolution is a union and a neighbourhood committee” with many participants coming from the capital’s three cities – Omdurman, Khartoum North and Khartoum City.

The protests came as a celebration of the formation of new trades unions.

The demonstrations, which have been taking place since December 2018, have been led by professionals – including doctors, journalists, lawyers, teachers and engineers.

They had intensified after Gen Abdul Fattah al-Burhan, the de facto leader of the country and the head of the sovereign council staged a coup in 2021 ending a two-year transitional period towards democracy.

A new deal aimed at returning to civilian rule, which was signed at the end of last year, has been met with scepticism by pro-democracy activists.

Source: BBC

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Lebanon’s currency value plunges to 100,000 against US dollar

 The value of the Lebanese pound on the parallel market is at a historic low as the country’s economic crisis continues.

The Lebanese pound has sunk to a historic low against the US dollar on the country’s parallel market, the latest sombre milestone in an economic meltdown that has plunged much of the population into poverty.

The Lebanese pound, officially pegged at 15,000 to the dollar, was trading at 100,000 against the greenback, dealers said on Tuesday – a dizzying plunge from 1,507 before the economic crisis hit in 2019.

The currency’s market value was at about 60,000 to the dollar in late January.

Despite the gravity of the crisis, the political elite, which has been widely blamed for the country’s financial collapse, has failed to check the currency’s free fall.

Since last year, the country has had no president and only a caretaker government, amid persistent deadlock between rival alliances in parliament.

Lebanese banks that have long imposed draconian withdrawal restrictions – essentially locking depositors out of their life savings – were closed on Tuesday as they resumed an open-ended strike.

The strike began early last month to protest against what the Association of Banks in Lebanon described as “arbitrary” judicial measures against lenders after depositors filed lawsuits to retrieve savings.

In response to the lawsuits, some judges sought to seize the funds of bank directors or board members or to force lenders to pay out customers’ dollar deposits in pounds at the old 1,507 exchange rate.

Customers had a two-week reprieve from the strike after caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati intervened late last month to impede the work of one of the judges investigating banks.

Over the past three years, bank withdrawal limits have sparked public outrage that has seen some Lebanese resort to armed hold-ups in a bid to lay hands on their own money.

The facades of many banks in the capital are almost unrecognisable from the outside, covered in protective metal panels, while ATMs have been vandalised and bank branches have repeatedly closed for days.

In mid-February, dozens of angry demonstrators attacked several banks in Beirut after the pound sunk to about 80,000 against the greenback.

Political inaction and a lack of accountability have been a hallmark of the Lebanese economic crisis.

Officials have failed to enact any of the reforms demanded by international creditors in return for unlocking billions of dollars in emergency loans.

In April last year, the International Monetary Fund announced an agreement in principle to provide Beirut with $3bn in loans spread over four years – conditional on a package of sweeping reforms.

Lebanon is facing the economic meltdown largely leaderless, as divided politicians have failed to elect a new president for months – in a country already governed by a caretaker cabinet with limited powers.

Lebanon has had no president since Michel Aoun’s term ended in October. Repeated sessions of parliament convened to elect a successor have all failed to reach an agreement on a consensus candidate.

SOURCE: AFP

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South African court orders healthcare workers to end strike

 Government officials say the strike adversely affected clinical operations across the country’s big hospitals.

The South African Labour Appeal Court has ordered striking state healthcare workers to end a weeklong walkout that has affected services in some of the country’s big hospitals, the health department said.

The court interdict on Monday will help stabilise services at the affected hospitals, the department said. Striking workers have been ordered to go back to work by Tuesday morning, it added.

“The strike has disrupted provision of essential healthcare services in the country, leading to untold suffering and frustrations amongst the public who desperately needed healthcare and life-saving treatment,” said South Africa’s Health Minister Joe Phaahla.

Since last week, the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (NEHAWU) members have been on strike after wage talks with the government failed.

The health department said on Sunday that clinical operations were hamstrung by a low nursing and administrative support staff turnout.

The labour relations act prohibits essential services workers from engaging in strike action which is detrimental to healthcare services with a risk of loss of life, he told a press briefing.

Union leaders could not be immediately reached for comment.

The union has been demanding a 10 percent wage hike, but the government offered 4.7 percent, according to local media SABC News.

The union said in a statement on Sunday that “no amount of litigation or intimidation by the government will deter us from this noble worthy cause that we have embarked on”.

NEHAWU leader Zola Saphetha told a news conference that the government’s demand to end the dispute “is another demonstration of how far government is prepared to undermine and collapse collective bargaining and the dispute resolution mechanism by imposing their will on workers”.

The South African military said it had deployed medics to help in the affected hospitals at the request of the health department.

SOURCE: REUTERS

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