Saudi Arabia on Sunday prepared to send scores of Rohingya to Bangladesh, according to reports published on www.opindia.com and Middle East Eye (MEE).
Rohingya immigrants, some of whom have already spent five to six years in Saudi detention, were being are lined up for deportation at the Shumaisi detention centre in Jeddah on Sunday.
According to video footage, a detainee, speaking in Rohingya, could be heard saying, that he has been in Saudi Arabia for the past six years and is now being sent to Bangladesh, where he, like other Rohingya, will become refugees.
The illegal Rohingya immigrants are lined up for deportations at the Shumaisi detention centre in Jeddah. Some of those Rohingya immigrants were also put in handcuffs after they had made attempts to resist the deportation.
"I've been here for the last five to six years, now they are sending me to Bangladesh. Please pray for me," he said.
Another recording sent to MEE recounted the events that led up to Sunday's forcible removal of the Rohingya.
"They came to our cells in the middle of the night at 12pm, telling us to pack our bags and get ready for Bangladesh," a Rohingya detainee, who wished to remain anonymous, told MEE.
"Now I am in handcuffs and being taken to a country I'm not from - I am Rohingya, not Bangladeshi."
Reportedly, most of the Rohingya immigrants had gone to Saudi Arabia carrying Bangladeshi passports which were obtained using fake documents.
They were locked up in the Shumaisi detention centre. Shockingly, some of those illegal immigrants had even used the passports from India, Nepal, Pakistan and Nepal to enter Saudi Arabia.
On January 03, India had deported a family of five Rohingyas to Myanmar after they had entered the country illegally.
The UNHCR had reportedly expressed its disappointment and sought clarification from India over the deportation of those illegal immigrants. It will now be interesting to watch what sort of reactions, if any, the UNHRC expresses at the mass deportation done by Saudi Arabia.
Recently, in October, Seven Rohingya Muslims who were lodged in jail since 2012 for illegally entering India were sent to the Myanmar border for deportation.
Nay San Lwin, a Rohingya activist, condemned the Saudi deportations.
"If these Rohingya detainees are released in Saudi Arabia, they can support their families held in refugee camps in Bangladesh, instead of accepting their deportation to Bangladesh," Lwin told MEE.
Meanwhile, an AFP report from Naypyidaw adds: Myanmar has called on its military to "launch operations" against ethnic Rakhine rebels behind a deadly attack on four police stations last week, a government spokesman said Monday, as a surge of violence forces thousands more from their homes.
The country's troubled western Rakhine state has seen a series of clashes in recent weeks between security forces and the Arakan Army (AA), an armed group calling for more autonomy for the state's ethnic Rakhine Buddhist population.
The area is one of the poorest in Myanmar and is scarred by deep ethnic and religious hatred.
A brutal army campaign in 2017 forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims over the border into Bangladesh, operations justified by the army as a way to stamp out Rohingya militants.
The latest violence by ethnic Rakhine rebels culminated on Friday-Myanmar's Independence Day-in brazen pre-dawn raids on four police posts in Buthidaung township near the Bangladesh border.
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