A police cordon is seen near an abandoned jungle camp used by people smugglers in Bukit Wang Burma in the Malaysian northern state of Perlis, which borders Thailand, earlier this week (AFP Photo/Mohd Rasfan)
Bangladesh plans to relocate thousands of Rohingya who have spent years in refugee camps near the Myanmar border to a southern island, an official said Wednesday, as the region faces a human-trafficking crisis.
The government has started planning the relocation to Hatiya island in the Bay of Bengal in a move backed by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said additional secretary Amit Kumar Baul.
"The relocation of the Rohingya camps will definitely take place. So far, informal steps have been taken according to the PM's directives," Baul, head of the government's Myanmar Refugee Cell, said.
A Rohingya leader urged the government to rethink, saying the plan would only make life worse for the refugees, many of whom have been languishing in the camps for years since they left Myanmar.
"We want the (Bangladesh) government and international organizations to resolve our issue from here," Mohammad Islam, a community leader in one of the camps, said.
Bangladesh is home to 32,000 registered Rohingya refugees who are sheltering in two camps in the southeastern district of Cox's Bazar which borders Myanmar.
The Muslim Rohingya leave Myanmar largely to escape discriminatory treatment by the Buddhist majority.
The United Nations refugee agency, which has been assisting the refugees in the camps since 1991, said such a scheme would have to be voluntary to succeed.
"The success of the plan would depend on what will be on offer in the new location and if the refugees would like to be there," said UNHCR spokeswoman Onchita Shadman.
A forced relocation would be "very complex and controversial", she said.
Baul said the move was partly motivated by concerns the camps were holding back tourism in Cox's Bazar, home to the world's longest unbroken beach where locals flock to hotels and resorts.
"The government has been paying (increasing) importance to the tourism sector. Therefore, a plan to relocate them to an isolated area is under process," he said.
Badre Firdaus, government administrator of Hatiya island, said 500 acres (200 hectares) had been identified as suitable for the relocation.
The move would not include the estimated 200,000 unregistered Rohingya refugees who have fled across the border over the past decade and taken refuge in Muslim-majority Bangladesh.
Most live close to the two camps but are not entitled to food or other aid.
Mass graves
Thousands of persecuted Rohingya from Myanmar as well as Bangladeshi migrants have been attempting perilous boat journeys organized by people-smugglers to Southeast Asia.
Malaysia is a favorite destination. Migrants often traveled to Thailand by boat, then overland to northern Malaysia. But Thailand began a crackdown on smuggling following the discovery of mass graves there, which appears to have thrown regional human-trafficking routes into chaos.
Malaysia said Thursday it believes 139 people are buried in marked graves at remote detention camps used by people-smugglers on the Thai border, with each wrapped in white cloth in Muslim tradition.
The abandoned sites were discovered in Malaysia on the weekend, escalating a crisis that erupted earlier this month when a Thai crackdown on trafficking networks left thousands of desperate people stranded at sea on rickety boats.
Thai authorities acted after discovering some 33 bodies in mass graves in camps in the country's south.
The camps on Malaysia's side of the border, which could have been capable of housing hundreds of people, drew allegations that authorities had turned a blind eye to the lucrative business.
"Based on the size of the graves, and after the area was cleared ... we have a clearer indication — single grave, single person," Deputy Home Minister Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar said in the border town of Wang Kelian.
Malaysia has previously said it had discovered 139 grave sites. When asked if he now believed there were 139 bodies in total, Wan Junaidi said: "Yes."
Initial investigations showed the bodies were wrapped in shrouds and their resting places marked with wooden sticks.
"It seems like proper burial, the bodies were wrapped in white cloth. It is like the Muslim burial some are shallow graves, not all," he told reporters.
Malaysian officials had repeatedly denied that such grisly sites existed on their soil, despite activists saying the area was a key transit point for traffickers.
Pressure on Suu Kyi
The latest development in the crisis came as the Dalai Lama urged fellow Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to do more to help the Rohingya.
Despite the wretched conditions they live in, and the crisis that their flight has created, the Myanmar opposition leader is yet to comment. Observers say she is anxious not to alienate voters among Myanmar's Buddhist majority ahead of elections slated for November.
The Dalai Lama said she must speak up, and that he had already appealed twice to her in person since 2012, when deadly sectarian violence in Myanmar's Rakhine state pitted the Rohingya against local Buddhists.
"It's very sad. In the Burmese (Myanmar) case I hope Aung San Suu Kyi, as a Nobel laureate, can do something," the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader told Thursday's The Australian newspaper. AFP