Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Submit Guest Post

Bangladesh imposes lockdown in Rohingya camps

Bangladesh has imposed a lockdown on a southern district, home to refugee camps housing more than a million Rohingya Muslims fleeing from Myanmar, to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

Officials said no-one was allowed to enter or exit Cox's Bazar district.


Cox's Bazar district head Kamal Hossain announced the measures following a rise in cases in the country as a whole.

The number of infections in Bangladesh has doubled to more than 200 in the last five days, with 20 dead.

"Entry and exit from Cox's Bazar district is prohibited from now on," Mr Hossain said in a statement, adding that "stern action" would be taken against those who violated the order.

"Only emergency food supply and medical services can continue work in the camps by maintaining extreme caution," Refugee Commissioner Mahbub Alam Talukder said.

Anyone who had arrived in the country recently would have to go into quarantine before visiting the camps, he added.

No cases are confirmed in the camps, but aid agencies fear an outbreak could overwhelm poor medical facilities.

Most refugees arrived in the camps following a military crackdown in the neighbouring state in 2017.

Almost 750,000 crossed the border, joining hundreds of thousands of refugees already living there.

Last week Human Rights Watch warned that 350,000 people within Myanmar itself were especially vulnerable to coronavirus.

Add EasternEye As Your Trusted Source
preferred source on google news

More For You

How Harpreet Kaur built YourLavaan, the Sikh matchmaking app behind 30 marriages

Founder Harpreet Kaur created the app after seeing friends struggle to find compatible partners

YourLavaan

How Harpreet Kaur built YourLavaan, the Sikh matchmaking app behind 30 marriages

Highlights

  • YourLavaan has brought together 30 Sikh couples across four countries since launching in 2020.
  • Founder Harpreet Kaur created the app after seeing friends struggle to find compatible partners.
  • The platform focuses on marriage, community values and personal compatibility rather than casual dating.

When Harpreet Kaur launched YourLavaan in 2020, she wasn't trying to compete with mainstream dating apps. Instead, she wanted to solve a problem she had witnessed among her own friends. Many were successful professionals, ready to settle down, yet struggling to find partners through traditional Sikh matrimonial routes or dating platforms that weren't designed with their community in mind.

"I personally had friends, and my partner had friends, who had been looking for three or four years for a partner," Kaur told Eastern Eye. "They were looking for someone from the same faith, but at that point there weren't any apps specific to the Sikh community. So we really just got going."

Keep ReadingShow less