COX'S BAZAR - When hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled Myanmar into Bangladesh two years ago, local communities were mostly welcoming."At first, as a member of the Muslim community, we helped them," said Mr Riazul Haque, 28, a labourer from Hakimpara, near the border town of Ukhiya.
Ukhiya was home to around 300,000 people, but the refugee influx of August 2017 has swelled the population to more than three times that many. Mr Mohammad Sojol said he lost his job as a rickshaw driver because vehicle owners now prefer to hire refugees for less pay - even though officially they are not allowed to work.Some of the Rohingya who settled outside the official camps are now being forced to return and children enrolled in local schools are being expelled.The largely Muslim Rohingya fled a military crackdown in Myanmar that the UN has likened to ethnic cleansing, joining some 200,000 already in Bangladesh.
"They are receiving all sorts of aid, but they have ample idle time as they don't have any other work," he told AFP.Tens of millions of methamphetamine pills enter Bangladesh from Myanmar through Cox's Bazar and drug kingpins frequently use Rohingya as mules to carry the narcotics to nearby cities. Crime and murder rates in the camps were higher than national statistics, according to police, which record roughly 3,000 murders annually in a country of 168 million.
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