A member of the Red Crescent Society carries relief materials in Teknaf after the landfall of Cyclone Mocha on May 14, 2023. Bangladesh’s weather office said Cyclone Mocha began crashing ashore on the Bangladesh-Myanmar border on May 14, uprooting trees and bringing heavy rain to an area home to hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees. , photo credit: AFP
The landfall of dangerous Cyclone Mocha near Sittwe port in Myanmar’s conflict-torn Rakhine province on Sunday has once again highlighted the need to address the Rohingya refugee crisis that began in 2017, when the community was forced to seek shelter across the Naf River in Cox’s Bazar. was forced to.
The full impact of the storm has not yet been assessed, but reports suggest that it caused extensive damage to private and public property in the area from Bangladesh’s St. Martin’s Island to the city of Sittwe, where the storm surge made landfall. Was. Along with the natural disaster, people are concerned about the actions of the Myanmar government which may affect the rescue operations after the storm.
“Mocha has made landfall. Damage and loss is expected to be widespread, with two lakh lives at risk. We are prepared to respond and will need unhindered access to all affected communities,” Titan Mitra, the United Nations Development Program’s resident representative in Myanmar, said shortly after the storm hit the coast of Myanmar and Bangladesh.
In preparation for the storm, the World Food Program stockpiled supplies in its warehouses in Rakhine province and authorities in Bangladesh moved thousands of people from St Martin’s Island which is located about nine km south of Cox’s Bazar. The United Nations Development Program, in coordination with the Bangladesh government, prepared to house 1,600 Rohingya refugees in camps at Kutu Palong to prevent loss of life, although the exact extent of material damage would be known only after the storm subsided. May go. According to Al Jazeera, the main Rohingya camp in Kutu Palong escaped bearing the brunt of the deadly force of the storm.
The crisis comes days after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina addressed the Indian Ocean Conference in Dhaka and said that her country had given “temporary shelter” to the Rohingyas despite many challenges. “This gesture averted a major humanitarian catastrophe in the region. Now, we seek the active support of the global community to repatriate the Rohingya people to their homeland in a safe and sustainable manner,” he said, highlighting the urgency of the situation. India, which has an active humanitarian assistance and disaster relief policy, has not yet announced its response to the disaster, which has affected the strategically important region, which is the gateway to the northeastern Indian states in the Bay of Bengal. expected to work as is.
The powerful storm has highlighted the plight of Rohingyas who live in makeshift structures made of bamboo and plastic sheets that are not designed to survive near Category 5 hurricane wind. The vulnerability of the Rohingya community is particularly acute as they face the double whammy of displacement and ongoing counter-insurgency operations in Myanmar’s Rakhine and neighboring regions.
Myanmar’s government has opened pagodas and schools to ensure the safety of people in Rakhine, but opposition leaders have criticized the military junta for not stopping its crackdown on political opponents in the region. Apart from the cities of Sittwe, Kyukpyu and Gwa, the storm has also hit the Coco Islands in the Bay of Bengal.
However, opposition forces in Myanmar said disaster mitigation preparedness was affected as the military junta severed communication channels in Rakhine and Sagaing provinces which are in the path of Cyclone Mocha. He has said that the Myanmar government is hindering “information access”. A spokeswoman for the opposition National Unity Government (NUG) further stated that about 13,000 people had fled Kani township in the Sagaing region just hours before the landfall of Cyclone Mocha. The NUG has said that at least 48 townships that fall in the path of Mocha are facing “military-imposed shutdowns”, making normal evacuations difficult. “Some 6 million people are already in need of humanitarian assistance in Rakhine State and the northwest of Myanmar, while 1.2 million have been displaced,” a spokesman for the NUG’s presidential office said on Sunday evening.