US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed deep concern about China’s growing nuclear arsenal during a meeting with foreign ministers of Asian countries and partner nations, the State Department said on Friday. Addressing a virtual meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), which groups more than two dozen countries, Blinken …
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Britain granted ‘dialogue partner’ status by Southeast Asian bloc
Britain has been granted “dialogue partner” status by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a step forward in London’s push to build stronger diplomatic ties in Asia following its exit from the European Union. Britain has been seeking the status as part of its post-Brexit policy shift to focus more …
Read More »Heavy rains displace thousands of Rohingya Muslim refugees in Bangladesh
Torrential monsoon rains have ruined the sprawling camps of Rohingya Muslim refugees in southern Bangladesh, turning settlements into fast-flowing rivers overnight and leaving thousands of refugees without shelter. On Wednesday alone, over 30 centimeters of rain fell on the camps in Cox’s Bazar district, which is home to more than …
Read More »More than 8,500 children used as soldiers in 2020: UN
More than 8,500 children were used as soldiers last year in various conflicts across the world and nearly 2,700 others were killed, the United Nations said on Monday.
Read More »Refugees in India, elsewhere hit hard by COVID-19 impact -rights report
At least 200,000 refugees are among the worst affected by India’s COVID-19 outbreak as they have no access to welfare schemes or free healthcare, a report by an international consortium of rights groups said on Wednesday. “The stateless in India have not received economic relief packages provided by the government…they …
Read More »HRW demands probe into UN ‘improper’ sharing of Rohingya data
Human Rights Watch (HRW) demands an investigation into the United Nations’ data collection on Rohingya Muslim refugees in Bangladesh, saying the UN refugee agency has “improperly” shared the information with authorities in Myanmar. The UN Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, has registered hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees in Bangladeshi camps …
Read More »India: Fire rips through Rohingya camp, leaving hundreds homeless
Hundreds of Rohingya rendered homeless after a massive fire razes Rohingya camp in the Madanpur Khadar area of Delhi. A massive fire has destroyed a Rohingya refugee camp in the Indian capital, New Delhi, leaving hundreds of people homeless. The blaze broke out at about 11:30 pm on Saturday and …
Read More »Rohingya refugee boat lands in Indonesia after 113-day voyage
A boat carrying dozens of Rohingya refugees that set sail in February but had been adrift in the Andaman Sea with engine failure has landed on an Indonesian island after a voyage of more than 100 days, a human rights official said. The vessel sailed on Feb. 11 from Cox’s …
Read More »Boat carrying Rohingya washes up in Indonesia
A total of 81 refugees on Idaman Island are staying in emergency tents and have been provided with food and water by locals as they await their fate. A boat carrying 81 Rohingya refugees has washed ashore at an uninhabited island in Indonesia after drifting for more than 100 days …
Read More »Rohingya protest against living conditions on Bangladesh island
Police say 4,000 refugees demonstrated when senior UN officials arrived on remote Bhasan Char island to visit the settlement. Several thousand Rohingya refugees have staged “unruly” protests against living conditions on a cyclone-prone island off Bangladesh where they were moved from vast camps on the mainland, police said. Since December, …
Read More »Quake in China’s Yunnan province kills three, injures 28
A strong, shallow quake has rocked southwestern China near the border with Myanmar, killing at least three people and injuring at least 27 others. The Yunnan province seismological bureau gave the magnitude of the Friday night quake as 6.4. It said the tremor struck eight kilometres (five miles) below the …
Read More »Bangladesh puts Rohingya camps under lockdown after COVID spike
Crowded camps that are home to hundreds of thousands of refugees placed under lockdown after the alarming spread of the coronavirus. Bangladesh authorities have imposed a lockdown in five Rohingya refugee camps in southeastern Bangladesh after an alarming spread of the coronavirus, officials said. The shutdown will initially last for …
Read More »Mainland China reports first local COVID-19 cases in more than three weeks
Mainland China reported seven new COVID-19 cases on May 13, including its first local transmissions in more than three weeks, the country’s national health authority said on Friday. Two of the new cases were local infections in the eastern province of Anhui, the National Health Commission said in a statement. …
Read More »Amnesty slams ‘barbaric’ caning sentences given to Rohingya Muslims by Malaysia
Amnesty International has called on Malaysia to withdraw the caning sentences recently handed down to a group of persecuted Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, saying the “barbaric” practice “amounts to torture.” Last month, Malaysia’s local media said that a court on Langkawi Island had sentenced a group of Rohingya refugees to …
Read More »US threatens China with sanctions over South China Sea claims
The United States has threatened to slap sanctions on China over accusations of Beijing’s exploitation of offshore resources in most of the South China Sea. The top US diplomat for East Asia said on Tuesday that Washington could respond with sanctions against Chinese officials and enterprises involved in what he …
Read More »Rohingya refugees tell Malaysia how dozens perished during the four-month voyage
Nearly 100 Rohingya migrants from Myanmar, including 30 children, were rescued from a rickety wooden boat off the coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra island on Wednesday. They had gone without food for several days, officials said Survivors from a boat crammed with over 300 Rohingya Muslim refugees told Malaysian authorities that …
Read More »Over one percent of humanity displaced: UN
Nearly 80 million people have been forced to flee their homes due to violence and persecution, marking a near-doubling of global displacement in a decade, the UN said Thursday. By the end of 2019, one out of every 97 people in the world was living uprooted and displaced, according to …
Read More »India, Bangladesh brace for the strongest storm ever recorded in the Bay of Bengal
Millions of people in India and Bangladesh are in the path of a super cyclone which is due to make landfall in less than 36 hours, bringing damaging winds and heavy rain to a region already struggling with the coronavirus pandemic. Super Cyclone Amphan became the strongest storm ever recorded …
Read More »Bangladesh says coronavirus detected in Rohingya refugee camp: official
The novel coronavirus has been detected in one of the camps in southern Bangladesh that are home to more than one million Rohingya refugees, officials said on Thursday. An ethnic Rohingya refugee and another person had tested positive for COVID-19, a senior Bangladeshi official and a U.N. spokeswoman said. It …
Read More »UN urges Bangladesh to accept stranded Rohingya boats
The United Nations’ top human rights official has called on the Bangladeshi authorities to allow the disembarking of two stranded boatloads of starving Rohingya Muslim refugees who have fled Myanmar by boats. In a letter to the Bangladesh government on Monday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet warned …
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