The monsoon clock is ticking. Heat and dust will turn to rain and mud.
Twelve feet of rain in just three months a million refugees will drown in misery.
Half the toilets will be flooded many cited way too close to homes. Fetid water
will bring sickness and so will the mosquitoes the silty soil from which
these bare hills are built will turn to sludge. The British Parliament's
International Development Committee has warned of imminent disaster and if a
cyclone were to strike it could be catastrophic,
without relocation fast people will die the British MPs stated, it's just way too
congested. And don't get the impression that this is just about the million plus
where Hindu refugees already here including the 700,000 recent arrivals
they are still coming fleeing across the frontier at the rate of 500 a week
and don't think that the mass murder the rape and the burning on the other side
has stopped either in fact, in many ways it's got worse.
This family arrived from Burma's Rakhine State the afternoon before we met them
'We tried to stay but we just couldn't take it anymore so we decided to escape to the mountains
teenagers were being abducted by the Myanmar military and forced to work for
them. Often he said these children never came back home
women were snatched from their own houses and raped
Mustafa said he'd seen many people murdered children cut in pieces and
villagers 'Life is too tough over there women from neighboring houses were
killed it wasn't just the army the Buddhists from the village sometimes
said 'come along to the market with us' and those who went were killed.
Taman budaya valet they brought bulldozers and literally smashed down
all the houses and there were no difference between the paddy fields and
where the houses once where everything was leveled I saw this with my own eyes
Amnesty International has released satellite images revealing how Rohingya
villages had been flattened to make way for new military bases roads and
helipads they branded it a land grab on a dramatic scale which made the refugees
return an even more distant prospect. Muhammad Ali has also just arrived with
his five-year-old Tasman era his one surviving daughter his father had been
killed in front of him he said his sister. 'When the military entered the
village everyone started to run I grabbed my daughter and my wife was with
my two sons they were behind I managed to escape but my wife didn't make it they
caught her, from where I saw this, I watched as they raped her and they killed along with my two sons.'
They've bulldozed the whole village now I managed to escape and I do not want to go back.
Repatriation of Rohingya was meant to have begun two months ago after an agreement between
Bangladesh and Burma. The Burmese regime has built what human rights groups have
condemned as concentration camps to house the returnees. 120,000 Ranger
already live behind barbed wire in Burma for some reason it seems that nobody
wants to go. So now with monsoon season looming the
government of Bangladesh has finally granted refugees an extra traunch of land
which the UN is now racing against time to flatten out.
'Moving mountains so that some of those currently crowded onto precipitous hillsides can urgently
rebuild their bamboo shacks on less dangerous terrain.
Well what's happened here, we've been allocated more land on the western side of the camp to resettle refugees
out to this area so this land is very as you can see it's very hilly terrain with
lots of gullies on it so we're over there we're taking the tops off of the
hills first of all manually and then over here
you'll see we were able to get machinery up on the hills to level the land down
so that more refugees can come and settle on this land. We do know the
monsoons are coming we know when they're coming and when the rains will start
that's our big concern. - It's like two and a half meters of rain for a year in three months
It's an incredible amount of rainfall here and that that's our big concern there will be landslides
and there will be flooding. The government of Bangladesh says it won't
send Rohingya it back into the jaws of death but it doesn't want the permanent
presence of a million refugees here either.
This country hasn't signed the UN Refugee Convention and doesn't even recognize
the stateless Rohingya as refugees.
So Bangladesh has hatched a plan to move them to an island in the Bay of Bengal
this plan was mooted months ago but the UN didn't take it seriously, now suddenly
they have to. Bhasan Char or floating island magically appeared from nowhere
17 years ago, it's formed by sediment and silt and has shifted shape repeatedly
it's dissected by tidal channels there's an 18-foot tidal range and it's
submerged during the monsoon. But the Chinese company that built Three Gorges
Dam is now building flood defenses to protect refugee accommodation a two
hundred and eighty million dollar project
they're advised by a firm of British hydrology consultants.
We've obtained these photographs showing some of nearly 1,500 barrack blocks currently being
built, the refugees will be crammed in with a population density 10 times that
of high-rise New York City. The last super cyclone to hit nearby islands and
the Bay of Bengal was in April 1991 it was one of the deadliest storms on record
nearly 145,000 people died.
Several very senior UN officials have privately told
Channel 4 News off their grave concern over plans to dump 100,000 Rohingya Bhasan Char.
Exactly what's going on on Bhasan Char
has been shrouded in secrecy neither the United Nations nor any other
international organisation has been allowed to visit and the Bangladesh
military has denied us permission to go there too but such is the concern and
interest in this place that our curiosity just got the better of us
We reached the island early in the morning the layers of sediment that comprise
this featureless and windswept outpost were clearly visible as was the frenetic
construction activity the Bangladesh government is bankrolling this project
which threatens to become a massive Asian Alcatraz for unwanted refugees
Before we could film any more we were summoned by the Bangladesh Navy politely
told to stop refused permission to land and ordered back to where we had come from.
'We can't go straight because it's so shallow...we head no choice.'
The fear among Rohingya jaw is that they may have no choice either.
So I want to ask Rohingya refugees what they make of these photographs here in the heart
of what is the biggest most densely populated and fastest-growing refugee
camp in the world none of them have had a say in any of this so the question is
would they be prepared to trade in these plastic and bamboo shacks for one of
these Barrett blocks on Prison Island?
Do you want to go? -No
I don't like this. - Why not?
This island is very dangerous.
We've been discussing this place Sam
'It's in the middle of nowhere nobody wants to live there
during the monsoon it goes underwater it'll be catastrophic.
Rafik said it was a painful enough journey to get here
and having got here nobody wants to move 'We just want justice he said for all the
rape and murder. We wouldn't go to that island even if they shot us.
What do you think about this have you heard?
'I am the leader of three sections of this camp he told me.
I speak on behalf of those people we will not go there even if the Bangladeshi army beats us
We would rather die here than go to the island.
I went to see the Bangladeshi government official
in charge of refugee relief to ask him about the island
he wasn't saying much. 'A lot of parts yet to be done it remains actually
remains there I will to complete the development process of this Bhasan Char Island
so it is I think too early to comment on this
there is concern among members of the international community that what is
being created there is essentially going to be a prison Island. 'I don't think so
the government and the people who really embraced generously this population in
huge numbers how do you assume that actually presume that they will be
subjugated to a prisoner conditions I don't think just that's going to be the case
The UN has appealed for nearly a billion
dollars to fund relief here for the next 10 months UN officials in the field are
unwilling to discuss the island there is very evident discomfort with the
government's plan no international agency will want to be complicit in
another forced relocation of this already traumatized and fragile population.
you