Pirates, cyclones and mud: B’desh’s island solution to Rohingya crisis

The island is two hours by boat from the nearest settlement. There are no buildings, mobile phone reception or people. During the monsoon it often floods and, when the seas are calm, pirates roam nearby waters hunting for fishermen to kidnap for ransom.
Welcome to Thengar Char, a muddy stain in the murky waters of the Bay of Bengal, identified by Bangladesh as a short-term solution to the humanitarian crisis unfolding on its border with Myanmar, across which some 70,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled.
Those refugees, escaping an army crackdown on insurgents that began in October, have joined more than 200,000 Rohingya already living in official and makeshift camps, straining resources in one of Asia's poorest regions. Bangladesh says the refugees bring crime and a risk of disease.
The influx has prompted Dhaka to revive a plan - much criticised by humanitarian workers when it was first proposed in 2015 - to move thousands of people to this uninhabited island about 250 km (150 miles) northwest of their border camps.
While most experts dismiss the scheme as impractical, a Bangladeshi minister told the news agency last week that it was determined to push ahead, adding authorities would provide shelters, other facilities and livestock.
Local administrators, however, say they have not been informed, and when Reuters visited the island the only signs of activity were a few buffalo lazily grazing on the yellow grass along its shores.
"We have only heard bad things about the Rohingya. If they work with the pirates and get involved in crime - we don't want them here," said Mizanur Rahman, 48, the administrator of Might Bangha village, the closest settlement to Thengar Char.
Rahman added, however, that if the Rohingya were "good people", they should be helped on humanitarian grounds. Others from the village echoed that sentiment, saying they were fellow Muslims and deserved assistance.
The crisis is the biggest challenge facing the government of Aung San Suu Kyi, straining Myanmar's relations with the countries of the region hosting large Rohingya populations such as Bangladesh and Malaysia, but also the United States.
About 1.1 million Rohingya live in apartheid-like conditions in northwestern Myanmar, where they are denied citizenship. Many in Buddhist-majority Myanmar regard them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, while the authorities in Dhaka say they are Myanmar nationals and must ultimately go back.
It takes about two hours by boat from Rahman's village on the coast of Sandwip - one of the largest islands in an archipelago in southern Bangladesh - to Thengar Char.
Thengar Char is flat and featureless, covered by bushes, grass and windswept trees.