Ottawa urged to rethink plan

Advocates call for new strategy to address violence in Bangladesh camps

- DYLAN ROBERTSON

Nearly one million Rohingya people have been forced to flee Myanmar to a crowded camp in Bangladesh that has been described as a miserable and volatile place.

As Canada’s strategy for supporting Rohingya people expires, advocates are calling for a rethink of how Ottawa is trying to limit suffering in refugee camps in Bangladesh, and to rout the military junta overseeing ethnic violence in Myanmar.

“We cannot turn away from this,” said Bob Rae, Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations.

In October 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed Rae as a special envoy to Myanmar, following brazen violence by Buddhist extremists against their Muslim neighbours, the Rohingya. Human rights groups say the country’s military killed, raped and burned entire villages.

The crisis has forced nearly one million Rohingya people to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh, where they languish in a crowded camp. Rae issued a report on the crisis, which led Canada to launch a strategy in 2018.

Ottawa appointed Rae to the UN in 2020, and Myanmar’s military led a 2021 coup d’état against its fledgling democratic government.

The military junta has overseen increasing ethnic conflict in Myanmar, which Rae called “more calamitous by the hour.”

Across the border in Bangladesh sits the world’s largest refugee camp in the town of Cox’s Bazar, which Jason Nickerson, an Ottawabased Doctors Without Borders representative, visited in February.