It boggles the sane mind how criminally governments are dealing with the refugee crises they are creating with war, occupation, genocide, sweatshop economics, neoliberal plunder. The US with its concentration camps for refugees & criminal misconduct toward children & Bangladesh with its surreal plan to deport thousands of Rohingya refugees to Bhasan Char, a monsoon & cyclone prone island in the middle of nowhere. The housing is army barracks, there is no economy & no way to survive, & there is no way to get away from the place. It would essentially become a dumping ground or a penal colony like Devil’s Island.
The deranged plan to deport thousands of Rohingya to Bhasan Char is supposed to be on a volunteer basis but in the few years they’ve been promoting it Bangladesh hasn’t found a single Rohingya volunteer. Except the UN which has offered to help implement the deportations. Since the island only emerged from the sea about eight years ago, they don’t even know if the damn thing is stable enough for human life.
Here’s a counterproposal: why don’t the UN officials offering to assist deportations & the Bangladesh officials who devised the plan move to Bhasan Char for a couple years & test out the possibilities before they force Rohingya to move there? If the bureaucratic halfwits think it’s good enough for refugees, why isn’t it good enough for them? Or don’t Rohingya lives matter?