Arakan News Agency | Exclusive
A Rohingya teacher was kidnapped by an armed gang in the Cox’s Bazar area of Bangladesh on Monday and was severely assaulted before being released.
According to a reporter from the Arakan News Agency, the 25-year-old refugee was kidnapped at gunpoint by a gang from the Kutupalong refugee camp and taken to a remote forest area, as confirmed by eyewitnesses.
The kidnappers beat the victim, Noor Alam, tying his hands and feet and threatening to kill him if he did not pay a ransom of 500,000 Bangladeshi Taka (USD 4115). However, he convinced them that he could only pay 100,000 Taka (USD 823).
A video clip of the kidnapped man being threatened with knives by the kidnappers spread across social media, causing panic among the refugees who demanded immediate action from the Bangladeshi authorities to identify and apprehend the gang and bring them to justice.
Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh face almost daily kidnappings by criminal gangs demanding ransom, which sometimes ends with the discovery of the kidnapped person’s body after their poor family fails to raise the large ransom amount.
In July, Rohingya refugees in the camps thwarted a kidnapping attempt of a refugee, and the police arrested one of the perpetrators. A Rohingya girl was kidnapped in the camps, and the kidnappers demanded a large ransom from her family. In June, the body of a Rohingya child was found murdered a day after being kidnapped when his family could not pay the ransom. The Bangladeshi authorities arrested a key suspect in a major network running kidnapping operations in Cox’s Bazar.
In recent months, a Rohingya youth was tortured after being kidnapped by unknown individuals, and the Rohingya child, Mohammed Arakan, was kidnapped, with the kidnappers burying his body in the sand and sending pictures to his family, demanding 700,000 Bangladeshi Taka (USD 5700) for his release. A Rohingya youth named Abu Yusuf recounted his kidnapping and torture by unknown individuals in the camps before being released after his family paid the ransom.
More than a million Rohingya refugees live in the Cox’s Bazar area of Bangladesh, having fled violence and persecution in Myanmar since the “genocide” campaign launched by the Myanmar military against them in 2017. The United Nations describes Cox’s Bazar camp as the largest refugee camp in the world.
