Bangladesh police on Monday (June 13th) charged at least 29 Rohingyas with the murder of a Rohingya leader and peace activist, Mohib Ullah, last September, a prosecutor said.
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Police have completed their investigation and filed an indictment against 29 Rohingyas for the murder in a court in Cox's Bazar, in the southeast of the country, prosecutor Faridul Alam told AFP.
“
Of the 29, the police arrested 15 people, the others are on the run.
At least four of those arrested have confessed to their role in the murder
,” Faridul Alam said.
ARSA accused
Mohib Ullah, founder of the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights (ARSPH), a community rights group, and main leader of nearly a million Rohingya living in camps in Bangladesh, was shot dead in front of his office.
His family immediately blamed his murder on the forces of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), a large insurgent group in Rakhine State (Arakan), in western Burma.
Police did not directly accuse ARSA of the murder, the prosecutor added, but said that “
those who opposed the repatriation (of Rohingyas to Burma) killed Mohib Ullah.
Some (of the accused) are members of ARSA
”.
ARSA, however, strongly denied any involvement in the murder.
Genocide
Mohib Ullah and his association had discreetly documented the crimes of the Burmese army suffered by the Rohingyas, a majority Muslim minority, while acting to improve living conditions in the camps.
A 48-year-old former teacher, the activist made himself known in 2019 by organizing a demonstration which brought together 100,000 people to mark their two years of exile.
That year, he was invited to the White House by US President Donald Trump and was also able to plead his case before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
After his murder, Mohib Ullah's family members found refuge in a UN-run transit camp and, in April, they were relocated to Canada as part of a third-country resettlement.
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Some 750,000 Rohingyas fled army abuses in Burma and sought asylum in neighboring Bangladesh in 2017, where there were already more than 100,000 refugees, victims of previous violence.
The Rohingyas survive, crammed into unsanitary camps sheltered by shacks made of tarpaulins, sheet metal and bamboo and refusing to return to Burma, which is predominantly Buddhist, until they have obtained citizenship rights.
In March, the United States for the first time acknowledged that Rohingya had been victims of a “
genocide
” perpetrated by the army