Home ›› 03 Oct 2021 ›› Front
Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen on Saturday vowed to bring the killers of Rohingya leader Mohibullah to justice soon.
Momen is the first person from the Bangladesh government to react to the Rohingya leader’s murder that sparked off global condemnation.
The minister said that a vested quarter killed Mohibullah as he wanted to return to Myanmar, his home country. “The government will take stern action against those who were involved in the killing. Nobody will be spared,” he said, reports UNB.
The Armed Police Battalion, meanwhile, arrested two more persons — Ziaur Rahman and Abdus Salam — over their suspected involvement in the murder of Mohibullah.
A team of the APBn raided the Kutupalang Rohingya camp in Ukhiya and detained them around midnight Friday and later handed them over to Ukhiya police, said APBn’s Superintendent of Police Naimul Haque, who is in charge of security at the Rohingya camps, reports BSS.
Another accused Mohammad Selim was also arrested on Friday noon in connection with the murder.
Mohibullah’s brother Habibullah on Thursday night filed a case with Ukhiya Police Station accusing unidentified people of killing his brother.
Unknown assailants gunned down Mohibullah in his office at Kutupalang camp on Wednesday night.
He was buried in Lambashia camp-1 in Ukhiya on Thursday afternoon after his namaz-e-janaza, which was attended by a large number of Rohingyas from camps in Ukhiya and Teknaf.
Reuters adds: Mohibullah was known as a moderate who advocated for the Rohingya to return to Myanmar with rights they were denied during decades of persecution.
He was the leader of the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights, founded in 2017 to document atrocities against Rohingya in their native Myanmar and give them a voice in international talks about their future.
But his high profile made him a target of hardliners and he received death threats, he told Reuters in 2019. “If I die, I’m fine. I will give my life,” he said at the time.
The killing has ignited grief and anger in the camps, the world’s largest refugee settlement, where residents said the killing is the latest evidence of mounting violence as armed gangs and extremists vie for power.
Though Mohibullah’s family and rights activists pointed towards Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, formerly known as Al Yaqeen group, the organisation in a post on Twitter on Friday said that it was “shocked and saddened” by the killing. It also decried “finger-pointing with baseless and hearsay accusations”.
Bangladesh hosts more than 1.1 million Rohingyas and the majority of them having fled Myanmar during a military crackdown in 2007 that the United Nations has said was carried out with genocidal intent.
Myanmar denied committing genocide, saying it was waging a legitimate campaign against insurgents who attacked police posts.
