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Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, who tried to cross the Naf River into Bangladesh to escape sectarian violence, are kept under watch by Bangladeshi security officials in Teknaf, December 25, 2016. (Photo by AFP) Bangladesh is pressing ahead with a controversial plan to relocate refugees from the persecuted Muslim Rohingya community in neighboring Myanmar to a secluded island despite international concern. Bangladeshi officials have for some time been intending to relocate tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees to a remote island in the Bay of Bengal in eastern Bangladesh. According to a government statement late on Sunday, Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali has sought help from foreign countries and organizations with the relocation plan. Ali briefed representatives from diplomatic missions and several United Nations agencies to take “meaningful measures” to resettle the refugees. Sixty ambassadors, high commissioners, heads of various diplomatic missions, and officials from UN agencie

Myanmar's security forces have committed mass killings and gang rapes of Rohingya Muslims and burned their villages since October in a campaign that probably amounts to crimes against humanity and possibly "ethnic cleansing", the U.N. human rights office said on Friday. Witnesses testified to "the killing of babies, toddlers, children, women and elderly; opening fire at people fleeing; burning of entire villages; massive detention; massive and systematic rape and sexual violence; deliberate destruction of food and sources of food", the report said. One woman told U.N. investigators how her eight-month baby boy had had his throat slit. Another was raped by soldiers and saw her five-year-old daughter killed as she tried to stop them. “The devastating cruelty to which these Rohingya children have been subjected is unbearable," U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein said in a statement. Around 66,000 people have fled from the Musl