The number of Rohingya refugees taking unsafe sea journeys in the hope of reaching Malaysia or Indonesia has actually surged by 360%, the UN has announced after numerous refugees were left stranded at the end of last year.Rohingya in Bangladesh refugee camps have cautioned that human smugglers have actually ramped up operations and are constantly looking for ...

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At least eight Bangladeshi asylum seekers have been released from immigration detention in Australia after languishing there for a decade, in a move that signals the Albanese government is winding back arbitrary detention, according to a lawyer for some of the men.

But while their release has given them hope, the men have spoken out about the...

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It has been five years since Myanmar’s military launched a campaign of massacres that killed about 7,000 Rohingya in a single month and compelled 700,000 to flee for the Bangladeshi border.

Since the first major military operation against the Rohingya minority in 1978, which forced out 200,000, the Rohingya have been collectively stripped of their...

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John Stonehouse was a Walter Mitty figure and the bizarre elements of his life, when again represented and improved in a new television drama, must not obscure his genuine dedication to colonial freedom and other less than popular political issues (Stonehouse story 'even more interesting' than television drama recommends, relative says, 3 January). Both sides ...

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Qatar is facing renewed calls from migrant workers, their families, and rights groups to compensate for human rights abuses including wage theft, injuries and uninvestigated deaths, days before the World Cup kicks off.

As fans and footballers descend on the Persian Gulf country for the month-long tournament, workers and their families, who have...

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In the 31 years since Anuara Begum’s family moved into their bamboo shelter in the Nayapara refugee camp, the only improvement they could make was replacing its tarpaulin roof with tin sheeting – less flimsy but hammer-loud when the rains come.

Running from Myanmar’s military, their new home was built to be temporary, and so it proved when it took j...

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Hatemon Nesa remembered hugging her young daughter tightly as the cramped, broken-down boat they were resting on drifted aimlessly. They had actually set off on 25 November from the squalid Cox's Bazar refugee camp in Bangladesh, where they had actually lived because 2017, when a ruthless crackdown by Myanmar's military forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to get away over the b.

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The floating gardens of Bangladesh & in pictures

Many farmers in south-western Bangladesh use floating rafts made from invasive water hyacinths to grow vegetables during the monsoon season – when dry land is scarce – to ensure food security in the low-lying country, which has recently been experiencing prolonged floods and waterlogging as a result of the changing climate...

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It was saddening to see the report on Indonesian farm workers being obliged to pay recruitment fees (Revealed: Indonesian workers on UK farm ‘at risk of debt bondage’, 14 August), but it would not surprise anyone who has worked with transnational migrant workers, particularly from developing countries.

For 19 years, I have volunteered with a...

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Dozens of hungry and weak Rohingya Muslims were found on a beach in Indonesia’s northernmost province on Sunday after weeks at sea, officials said.

The group of 58 men arrived on Indrapatra beach at Ladong, a fishing village in Aceh Besar district, said local police chief Rolly Yuiza Away. Villagers who saw the group of Rohingya on a rickety wooden...

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At least 24 people have died and millions were without power after Cyclone Sitrang struck Bangladesh, forcing the evacuation of about a million people.

Most of the deaths were from falling trees, police and government officials said, with two dying in the north on the Jamuna river when their boat sank. A Myanmar national working on a ship also died...

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India marks 75 years of independence from Britain & in pictures

This month marks three-quarters of a century since the creation of the independent state of India after British rule. Here we look back at some of the key events that shaped the country...

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“That period was a time I was in hell” is how one woman describes her two years working for VK Garments (VKG) in Thailand. Hla Hla Tey, who at 54 has struggled to find work since losing her job and now lives in a monastery, is among 130 former workers who are bringing a landmark case against Tesco in the UK. The supermarket giant stands accused of...

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The world has done “absolutely nothing” to ensure safety in Myanmar for its persecuted Rohingya minority, said Bangladesh’s foreign minister, complaining that his country is sheltering more than 1 million refugees without support.

Foreign minister Shahriar Alam told the Guardian financial support for the Rohingya has decreased each year and there...

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After living in Britain for nearly half a century, Pabitra Ghosh is still gripped by a rootlessness borne after being displaced from modern-day Bangladesh as a child.

When a communal riot broke out in 1950, Ghosh, then five, fled with his family across the newly carved Indian border from East Pakistan. The train journey was both “bedlam” and “tr...

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Activists have called for urgent assistance to rescue 160 Rohingya refugees, including young children, who they say are stranded at sea on a damaged boat and have been without food or water for days.

The boat, which activists say is near Malaysian waters, is believed to have left on 25 November from Bangladesh, where almost 1 million Rohingya live...

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Diwali: Hindu festival of lights celebrations around the world & in pictures

Worshippers pray at Veda Mandir Hindu temple in Bolton, England

Shilpa Shah, from Bolton, England, prays at the Veda Mandir temple

Sri Lankan worshippers light oil lamps at a temple in Colombo

A rose seller at Ghazipur wholesale flower market

Fireworks illuminate Dubai Festival City in the Gulf emirate

Diwali, one of the most popular Hindu festivals, is celebrated by devotees all over the world. Also known as the festival of lights, it symbolises the victory of good over evil and commemorates Lord Ram’s return to the Ayodhya kingdom after a 14-year exile...

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Zareena Parveen was 12 years old when British colonial India was carved up along religious lines. Two independent states were created: Hindu-majority India, and the Muslim-majority Dominion of Pakistan, which was made up of West Pakistan and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).

As millions rushed to cross the new borders, violence erupted between Hindu,...

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Two top leaders of Bangladesh’s main opposition party have been arrested amid a violent crackdown on government opponents during which at least seven people have been shot dead and thousands arrested.

Over recent weeks, Sheikh Hasina’s government has launched a repressive campaign against the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP), which has...

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Global criticism of the treatment of hundreds of thousands of workers from countries such as Nepal, India and Bangladesh who have been building Qatar’s World Cup dream led to the Gulf state introducing a range of labour policy changes that it says have improved the lives of the migrant workforce. Have those changes worked and how likely are they t...

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The story of India’s bloody partition in August 1947, that led to the deaths of at least 1 million Indians and the displacement of around 15 million, is a very British one. In what was to become the British Raj’s swan song after two centuries of colonial rule, Cyril Radcliffe, a British judge who had never visited colonial India before, was a...

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The deaths of migrant workers in Qatar in the build-up to this year’s World Cup have drawn criticism across the world. While the tournament’s organizers put the official count at 40, estimates by the Guardian put the figure in the thousands. Here we explore the key questions around an issue that has tarnished the World Cup for many fans.

Why is...

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Workers and activists have been campaigning to push Levi’s, one of the world’s largest clothing brands, to sign on to an international accord for workers’ health and safety in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

On 24 April 2013, the Rana Plaza building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which housed five garment clothing factories, collapsed, killing 1,134 people and...

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A woman has become the latest family member of a British family of five on holiday in Bangladesh to die from a suspected poisoning.

Samira Islam, 20, died on Friday after she was discovered unconscious in a locked room by police officers on 26 July. Her father, Rafiqul Islam, 51, a taxi driver, and his 16-year-old son, Mahiqul, also died in the...

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Shamima Begum would face the death penalty if sent to Bangladesh, her parents’ country of origin, and is now effectively stateless, a court has heard.

The 23-year-old’s legal appeal at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) was told that the then home secretary, Sajid Javid, had failed to consider the “serious practical consequences” of r...

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The camera of a budget smartphone has become a way for many of the Rohingya stuck in Bangladesh’s refugee camps to tell their own stories, capturing photos of their lives in the camps, which became the world’s largest when 700,000 people fled the Myanmar military five years ago, joining 300,000 who had already sought refuge across the border.

These...

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Two sisters handed me a piece of paper that was faded and yellow. On it were typewritten words from their father. He had died in the 1990s and his final request had been for his ashes to be divided up and scattered in three different places: the Punjabi village in modern-day Pakistan where he’d been born, the River Ganges at Haridwar in India, and...

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Two Islamist militants who were on death row in Bangladesh for the killing of a US blogger critical of fundamentalist Islam have made a dramatic escape on motorbikes while being escorted to a court hearing in the capital, Dhaka.

The two men were among those convicted of the murder of Avijit Roy, an American-Bangladeshi writer and blogger who was hac...

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Nur Asma is 10 years old. She lives in the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, with her family. She has four siblings; she is the third child in the family.

Nur loves creative play – crafting, making horses and utensils out of mud, making a chicken coop from bamboo, that sort of thing, and she loves studying too. She is very shy and i...

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Bangladeshi photographer Mithail Afrige Chowdhury has spent six years on a series featuring workers in his country’s ship-breaking yards. This image was taken in Sadarghat, Dhaka. The man he captured smiled and gave him permission to share it as he stepped on to dry land, where Chowdhury was shooting from.

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[Bangladesh] - Sea 'a graveyard' as variety of Rohingya running away Bangladesh by boat soars

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