AFP report, July 8, 2023
COX’S BAZAR: Six Rohingya refugees were killed in a Bangladesh relief camp amid clashes that broke out just hours after an International Criminal Court prosecutor visited the settlements to gather testimony, police said on Friday.
This week’s violence was the latest in a series of deadly clashes between the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) and the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO), two rival insurgent groups operating in the camps.
Faruq Ahmed, a spokesman for the Armed Police Battalion that looks after security in the refugee camps, told AFP that five people had been shot dead in a gunfight before dawn on Friday.
“All five who were killed in the gunfight are members of ARSA including a commander,” he said, adding that security had been stepped up in the camps as a result.
Ahmed said that the violence came hours after the murder of Ebadullah, a refugee community leader, apparently at the hands of ARSA members.
Local daily Prothom Alo said Ebadullah, 27, had been marshalling refugees to meet with ICC prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan, who visited the camps on Thursday to record statements from witnesses to the 2017 crackdown in Myanmar.
ARSA did not immediately comment on the killings, but its members have been accused of targeting Rohingya civic leaders who challenge its authority.Karim Khan, the ICC prosecutor, told reporters in Dhaka that neither Ebadullah’s murder nor the other killings were linked to the court’s work.
“This has nothing to do with the ICC or anything else,” he said.
Since the court’s genocide probe began in 2019, “there has not been one incident that has come to our attention… of any individual being targeted because of the ICC or any perceived or actual involvement in the ICC”, he added.
Mr Khan said he was working to expedite the court’s probe into abuses against the Rohingya but his task had been hampered by restrictions on travel to Myanmar.https://www.dawn.com/news/1763606/six-killed-in-rohingya-camps-after-icc-officials-visit
