Watchdog Urges Bangladesh To Lift Internet Ban In Rohingya Camps Amid COVID-19

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 29th March, 2020) The Bangladeshi government should waive its ban on the internet and phone communications in the Rohingya refugee camps in order not to hinder the timely coordination of essential preventive measures by humanitarian groups amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a prominent human rights organization said in a press release.

According to Human Rights Watch, aid workers and camp residents rely heavily on WhatsApp and other internet-run messengers to share important information and coordinate emergency services. Not only does the shutdown prevent effective delivery of critical information on COVID-19, but it also prevents aid workers from conducting such a crucial response measure as contact tracing to curb the spread of infection.

"The Rohingya refugee camps are a tinderbox for the coronavirus pandemic," the press release quoted Brad Adams, the Asia director at Human Rights Watch, as saying.

The�Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission put a ban on internet access and mobile SIM cards in the Rohingya camps last September. The HRW has described the move as "neither necessary nor proportionate," and thereby breaching international human rights law.

It is not clear how the Rohingya are supposed to self isolate and report their symptoms - like the Bangladeshi government has told the public to do - if they have no internet and phones, HRW asks.

The watchdog claims that the Bangladesh government is not adequately prepared to tackle COVID-19, citing the fact that of 170 million population only 920 people have been tested so far and that there is no testing capacity and a severe shortage of necessary protective equipment outside of Dhaka.

HRW further cites unnamed aid workers as claiming that the Bangladeshi officials forbade them to run any information campaigns about COVID-19 for fear of creating panic. A 52-year-old woman from a Rohingya camp was cited as saying that she only learned about the pandemic recently from a religious leader who gathered them for a family pray.

This makes Rohingya double vulnerable to COVID-19, the watchdog said, as given that camps are desperately overcrowded and void of adequate hygiene, it gets impossible for them to observe social distancing and prevent community transmission.

In August 2017, the Myanmar authorities launched an unprecedented violence campaign against the Rohingya after militants, allegedly from this minority group, carried out attacks on police posts in the country's north-western state of Rakhine. Police and armed forces burned entire villages to the ground, gang-raped women, harassed and tortured civilians on top of killing, shooting and beating them. More than 700,000 Rohingya have fled the country as a result, mainly to neighboring Bangladesh.