RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (AP) — Bangladesh head coach Chandika Hathurusingha is still interested in completing his contract with the men’s national cricket team to 2025 despite the recent political turmoil in the country.
There is a strong possibility of a major shakeup in the Bangladesh Cricket Board after the turmoil.
“I have signed a contract till whatever the date and I’m looking forward to serve that term,” the 55-year-old Hathurusingha told reporters in Rawalpindi on Monday.
“If the board (is) changed and the new people want to make a change, I’m OK with that. (If) they want me to continue, if they’re happy with me, I’m happy with that.”
He also said his “thoughts and prayers are with the families that lost loved ones.”
Hathurusingha is preparing his team for the opening game of a two-match test series against Pakistan, starting Wednesday at Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium.
Hathurusingha, a former Sri Lankan international cricketer, was appointed Bangladesh’s all-format coach early in 2023 on a two-year contract. It was Hathurusingha’s second stint as Bangladesh coach after 2014-17 before he left to coach Sri Lanka.
The unrest in Bangladesh disrupted the preparations back home of its test team and players got an additional three days of training in Lahore when they arrived in Pakistan last Tuesday.
Six Bangladesh test players, who came with the country’s “A” team, also got a four-day practice game against Pakistan Shaheens in Islamabad, although the drawn game was disrupted by the weather.
The Bangladesh test squad includes star all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan, who was a lawmaker in ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government, but was playing in Canada at the time she resigned earlier this month.
Pakistan has included pace bowlers Shaheen Shah Afridi, Naseem Shah, Khurram Shehzad and Mohammad Ali in its playing XI for the first test.
The selectors had already released sole specialist leg-spinner Abrar Ahmed and uncapped batter Kamran Ghulam.
Rawalpindi will also host the second test from Aug. 30.
UPDATED: Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus will lead Bangladesh‘s interim government following Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina‘s flight from the country amid mass protests.
Joynal Abedin, press secretary to Bangladesh President Mohammed Shahabuddin, announced the decision early Wednesday after a meeting involving military chiefs, student protest organizers, business leaders and civil society members.
Yunus, 84, a longtime political opponent of Hasina, is expected to return soon from Paris, where he has been undergoing a minor medical procedure. The economist and banker, awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his microcredit work, founded Grameen Bank in 1983, helping thousands escape poverty through small loans.
President Shahabuddin dissolved parliament on Tuesday, paving the way for the interim administration and new elections. He also ordered the release of opposition leader Khaleda Zia from house arrest, a longtime Hasina rival convicted on corruption charges in 2018.
Yunus, who had previously faced corruption charges he claimed were politically motivated under Hasina’s rule, called her resignation the country’s “second liberation day.”
Anti-government protestors celebrate in Shahbag near Dhaka university area in Dhaka on August 5, 2024. Protests in Bangladesh that began as student-led demonstrations against government hiring rules in July culminated on August 5, in the prime minister fleeing and the military announcing it would form an interim government. (Photo by Munir UZ ZAMAN / AFP) (Photo by MUNIR UZ ZAMAN/AFP via Getty Images)
AFP via Getty Images
PREVIOUSLY: Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has resigned and left the country. This development follows weeks of intense protests and violent clashes across the nation.
Hasina, who had led Bangladesh since 2009, landed in Ghaziabad, in neighboring India.
Military and Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials, speaking anonymously, confirmed the resignation to AP earlier.
Bangladesh’s army chief General Waker-uz-Zaman announced the formation of an interim government in a televised address to the nation.
In his address, Waker-uz-Zaman stated he would meet with President Mohammed Shahabuddin, expressing hope for a “solution” by day’s end. The army chief also revealed he had already communicated with the country’s opposition political parties.
“Justice” for all Bangladeshi people was promised by Waker-uz-Zaman, addressing a key demand of protesters following the deaths of hundreds over recent weeks. The identity of the interim government’s leader remains unclear at this time.
The situation in Dhaka remains volatile, with thousands of protesters in the streets and more expected to join. Reports indicate demonstrators have entered Hasina’s official residence.
The unrest began as student protests against a quota system reserving up to 30% of government jobs for relatives of 1971 independence war veterans. Protesters argued the system is discriminatory and instead seek a merit-based alternative. It since evolved into a broader anti-government movement with demonstrators calling for an end to Hasina’s 15-year rule.
Recent clashes between protesters and security forces intensified the crisis. The BBC reports at least 90 people were killed in confrontations on Sunday, with the death toll over the past month reaching approximately 300.
Government attempts to quell the demonstrations through force, curfews and internet restrictions have largely backfired, fueling further public outrage.
The military has imposed a curfew as the situation continues to unfold.
Hasina’s departure comes just months after her fourth consecutive election victory in January. That vote was boycotted by her main opponents, raising questions about its legitimacy. In the lead-up to the polls, thousands of opposition members were jailed, though the government maintained the election was democratically held.
In late July, the internet had been shut down and mobile services severely disrupted in Bangladesh amid student protests.
Bangladesh’s most feted filmmaker Mostofa Sarwar Farooki described the events to Variety as “amazing” and Monday as the “second independence for Bangladeshi people.” The country had gained independence from Pakistan in 1971. “The most beautiful part of this movement is that people from all walks of life participated, led by Gen Z youth,” Farooki said. “English medium, Bangla medium, Arabic medium, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, all participated in the movement.”
“It’s an unbelievable feeling,” Farooki added. “People are enjoying. I hope we move towards a beautiful, democratic society where there is freedom of expression, fair justice for all and no corruption. And where there will be artistic freedom and people can make whatever films they want without barriers and not have to worry from the script stage, ‘Can I show this?’”
Farooki’s “Saturday Afternoon” had considerable festival play, winning awards at Fukuoka, Moscow and Vesoul. It takes its cue from the brutal terrorist attack on the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka in 2016, which took place on a quiet Saturday afternoon and left more than 20 people dead. It
The film was initially banned and had finally been cleared for release in January after a four year struggle with the Bangladesh Film Censor Board. However, Bangladesh’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting took a U turn subsequently.
Earlier Tuesday, a key organizer of Bangladesh’s student protests called for Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus to head an interim government.
Anti-government protesters hold the Bangladeshi flag outside parliament house on August 5th.
Piyas Biswas/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Hasina fled the country by helicopter Monday as protesters defied military curfew orders and march on the capital before thousands of demonstrators stormed her official residence and other buildings associated with her party and family.
Her departure came after weeks of protests – against a quota system for government jobs – descended into deadly violence, fueling a broader challenge to her 15-year rule. The government attempted to quell demonstrations by shutting schools, imposing curfews and sending in troops to shoot tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition, leading to some 300 deaths, but those heavy-handed tactics only drove further discontent.
Bangladesh’s figurehead president and its top military commander said late Monday that an interim government would be formed soon to preside over new elections.
Yunus, who is in Paris according to Indian media, told student leaders he would be willing to serve, in light of the country’s present situation, protests organizer Nahid Islam said in a video posted to social media.
Yunus, who called Hasina’s resignation the country’s “second liberation day,” is a longtime opponent of the ousted leader. During her administration, the government accused him of corruption and put him on trial on charges he said were motivated by vengeance. He received the Nobel in 2006 for work pioneering microlending.
Islam said the student protesters would propose more names for the cabinet and suggested that it would be difficult for those in power to ignore their wishes.
Another of Hasina’s opponents, Khaleda Zia, the former prime minister, was released after years of house arrest Tuesday, according to the Agence France-Presse.
Military chief Gen. Waker-uz-Zamam said Monday he was temporarily taking control of the country, as soldiers tried to stem unrest. The military wields significant political influence in Bangladesh, which has faced more than 20 coups or coup attempts since gaining independence in 1971.
Mohammed Shahabuddin, the country’s figurehead president, said after meeting with Waker-uz-Zamam and opposition politicians that Parliament would be dissolved and a national government would be formed as soon as possible, leading to fresh elections.
Speaking after Hasina was seen on television footage boarding a military helicopter with her sister, Waker-uz-Zaman sought to reassure a jittery nation that order would be restored.
Indian media have reported that Hasina may seek asylum in the U.K. When approached by CBS News, the British Home Office did not comment on the reports, but did say that people seeking international protection should claim asylum in the first safe country they reach and that British asylum rules don’t allow someone to travel to the U.K. to seek refuge.
‘An end to the mafia state’
The streets of Dhaka appeared calmer Tuesday, with no reports of new violence.
Jubilant protesters still came in large numbers to the ousted leader’s residence, some posing for selfies with the soldiers guarding the building where a day earlier angry demonstrators had looted furniture, paintings, flower pots and chickens.
But many fear that Hasina’s departure could lead to even more instability in the densely populated South Asian nation, which is already dealing with crises from high unemployment to corruption to climate change.
Amid security concerns, the main airport in Dhaka, the capital, suspended operations for eight hours.
On Tuesday, the country was still counting the toll of weeks of violent unrest that produced some of the nation’s worst bloodshed since the 1971 war of independence.
Violence just before and after Hasina’s resignation left at least 109 people dead, including 14 police officers, and hundreds of others injured, according to media reports, which could not be independently confirmed.
Hundreds of thousands of people poured onto the streets waving flags and cheering to celebrate Hasina’s resignation. But some celebrations quickly turned violent, with protesters attacking symbols of her government and party, ransacking and setting fires in several buildings.
“This is not just the end of the tyrant Sheikh Hasina; with this we put an end to the mafia state that she has created,” declared Sairaj Salekin, a student protester, on the streets of Dhaka.
Anti-government protesters gather at parliament in Dhaka to celebrate the resignation of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on August 5th.
Piyas Biswas/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Crowds also ransacked Hasina’s family’s ancestral home-turned-museum where her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman – the country’s first president and independence leader – was assassinated. They torched major offices of the ruling party and two pro-government TV stations, forcing both to go off the air. At least three other TV stations were attacked.
More than a dozen people reportedly were killed when protesters set fire to a hotel owned by a senior member of Hasina’s party in the southwestern town of Jashore, while at least 25 people died amid violence in Savar, just outside Dhaka, the reports said. Another 10 people died in Dhaka’s Uttara neighborhood.
In the southwestern district of Satkhira, 596 prisoners and detainees escaped from a jail after an attack on the facility Monday evening, the United News of Bangladesh agency reported, as police stations and security officials were attacked across the country.
Police in Dhaka mostly left their stations and assembled in a central barracks in fear of attacks after several stations were torched or vandalized.
The U.S. Embassy in Dhaka said Monday that U.S. citizens should “strongly consider returning to the United States when safe to do so,” given the violence.
The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party Tuesday urged people to exercise restraint in what it said was a “transitional moment on our democratic path.”
“It would defeat the spirit of the revolution that toppled the illegitimate and autocratic regime of Sheikh Hasina if people decide to take the law into their own hands without due process,” Tarique Rahman, the party’s acting chairman, wrote on the social media platform X.
In a statement Monday, the United Nations’ human rights chief, Volker Türk, said the transition of power in Bangladesh must be “in line with the country’s international obligations” and “inclusive and open to the meaningful participation of all Bangladeshis.”
Hasina, meanwhile, landed at a military airfield near New Delhi on Monday after leaving Dhaka and met India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, the Indian Express newspaper reported. The report said Hasina was taken to a safe house and is likely to travel to the United Kingdom.
The 76-year-old was elected for a fourth consecutive term in a January vote that was boycotted by her main opponents. Thousands of opposition members were jailed before the polls, and the U.S. and the U.K. denounced the result as not credible, though the government defended it.
Hasina’s son, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, told the BBC he doubted his mother would make a political comeback, as she has in the past, saying she was “so disappointed after all her hard work.”
Sheikh Hasina’s departure appears to have defused the high tension in Dhaka, where more deadly protests were feared on Monday.
Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has resigned and fled the country in the face of ongoing protests.
The longtime leader of the country has boarded a military helicopter, an aide told Al Jazeera, after crowds ignored a national curfew to storm the prime minister’s palace in Dhaka on Monday.
Close to 300 people have died amid weeks of protest the authorities have sought to crush. Following a night of deadly violence that killed close to 100 on Sunday, tension had remained high on Monday as protesters called for a march on Dhaka and the army prepared to address the nation.
By early afternoon, however, media reported that the mood on the streets had turned to one of celebration after the news of Hasina’s departure spread.
In an address to the nation, General Waker-Uz-Zaman, the Chief of Army Staff, confirmed that the prime minister has resigned and that an interim government will now run the country.
He urged citizens to keep trust in the army, which, he said, would return peace to the country.
“We will also ensure that justice is served for every death and crime that occurred during the protests,” he said, calling on the public to exercise patience and cease any acts of violence and vandalism.
“We have invited representatives from all major political parties, and they have accepted our invitation and committed to collaborating with us,” the general added.
Images on national television showed thousands of people breaking into the prime minister’s official residence.
It also showed large crowds of protesters out in the street in scenes of jubilation as the news of the departure of Hasina started spreading.
Al Jazeera’s Tanvir Chowdhury, reporting from Shahbag Square – the epicentre of the student protesters – said he has “never witnessed something like this” in the capital.
“Everybody is celebrating, not just students – people from all walks of life. They said this had to happened, there was nothing we could say, democracy was squeezed and now we are free,” Chowdhury said. The message from the protesters is that whoever comes to power next “will now know that they won’t tolerate any kind of dictatorship or mismanagement and that the students will decide,” he said.
Protests in the country started a months ago over controversial governmental job quotas. They soon morphed into a nationwide unrest and into an unprecedented uprising against Hasina and her ruling Awami League party.
Now that she is gone and the army has promised an interim government, the military has a “very tough job ahead,” said Irene Khan, a UN special rapporteur.
“We are all hoping that the transition would be peaceful and that there will be accountability for all the human rights violations that have taken place recently including the killing of about 300 people in the last three weeks,” Khan told Al Jazeera.
“Bangladesh has, of course, an enormous task ahead. It is not the poster child of sustainable development anymore. The previous government had driven this country into despair, and there would be a lot of hard work to do to build it up but most of all I think its extremely important that the army respect human rights”.
Bangladesh is experiencing a complete internet shutdown as its government attempts to clamp down on widespread student protests that have resulted in the deaths of at least 32 people, AFP. The unrest is centered around the country’s quota system that requires a third of government jobs to be reserved for relatives of veterans who had fought for Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan in 1971.
On Thursday, several thousand protestors in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, had state broadcaster BTV, smashed windows and furniture and set offices on fire, trapping “many” people inside, according to a post on BTV’s official Facebook page. 17 people died on Thursday amid clashes with police, Al Jazeera. To control the situation, Bangladeshi authorities shut down internet and phone access throughout the country, a common practice in South Asia to prevent the spread of rumors and misinformation and exercise state control. NetBlocks, a global internet monitor that works on digital rights analyzed live network data that showed that Bangladesh was in the middle of a “near-total national internet shutdown.”
⚠️ Confirmed: Live network data show #Bangladesh is now in the midst of a near-total national internet shutdown; the new measure follows earlier efforts to throttle social media and restrict mobile data services, and comes amid reports of rising deaths at student protests 📉 pic.twitter.com/nMwwS0MDnC
Internet shutdowns are a to crack down on conflict in countries around the world. According to internet watchdog Access Now, the number of shutdowns around the world each year. In 2023, 39 countries collectively shutdown internet access more than 160 times for a variety of reasons including protests, exams and elections.
Bangladesh has frequently blacked out the internet to crack down on political opposition and activists. At the end of 2023, research tool CIVICUS Monitor, which provides data on the state of civil society and freedoms in nearly 200 countries, Bangladesh’s civic space to “closed,” its lowest possible rating, after the country imposed six internet shutdowns the previous year. That made Bangladesh the fifth-largest perpetrator of internet shutdowns in 2022, Access Now .
The country’s telecom regulator had pledged to keep internet access on through Bangladesh’s general elections at the beginning of 2024, but that electoral period is now over. Despite the pledge, Bangladesh to news websites during its elections.
A U.N. mission of foreign law enforcement led by Kenya is arriving in Haiti to try to curb the ongoing surge in gang violence there. Once all personnel arrive, there will be 2,500 police and soldiers from multiple countries including the Bahamas, Bangladesh and Jamaica. Eyder Peralta, an international correspondent for NPR, joined CBS News to discuss the situation in Haiti.
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Two senior officials working for anti-terror police in Bangladesh allegedly collected and sold classified and personal information of citizens to criminals on Telegram, TechCrunch has learned.
The data allegedly sold included national identity details of citizens, cell phone call records and other “classified secret information,” according to a letter signed by a senior Bangladeshi intelligence official, seen by TechCrunch.
The letter, dated April 28, was written by Brigadier General Mohammad Baker, who serves as a director of Bangladesh’s National Telecommunications Monitoring Center, or NTMC, the country’s electronic eavesdropping agency. Baker confirmed the legitimacy of the letter and its contents in an interview with TechCrunch.
“Departmental investigation is ongoing for both the cases,” Baker said in an online chat, adding that the Bangladeshi Ministry of Home Affairs ordered the affected police organizations to take “necessary action against those officers.”
The letter, which was originally written in Bengali and addressed to the senior secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs Public Security Division, alleges the two police agents accessed and passed “extremely sensitive information” of private citizens on Telegram in exchange for money.
According to the letter, the police agents were caught after investigators analyzed logs of the NTMC’s systems and how often the two accessed it.
The letter reveals the identity of the officials. One of the accused is a police superintendent serving with the Anti-Terrorism Unit (ATU). The other is an assistant police superintendent deputy at the Rapid Action Battalion, also known as RAB 6, a controversial paramilitary unit that the U.S. government sanctioned in 2021 over allegations that the unit is linked to hundreds of disappearances and extrajudicial killings. TechCrunch is not naming the two people who were accused as it’s unclear if they have been charged under the country’s legal system.
The NTMC is a government intelligence agency established under Bangladesh’s Ministry of Home Affairs. The agency’s core task is to monitor all telecommunications traffic and intercept phone and web communications to detect and prevent threats to national security.
Organizations like Human Rights Watch and Freedom House have criticized the NTMC for lacking safeguards against abuses, both against free speech as well as privacy. Over the years, NTMC procured sophisticated technology from companies in Israel, which Bangladesh does not officially recognize, as well as other Western countries, to conduct mass surveillance largely on opposition party members, journalists, civil society members and activists.
As part of its mission, the NTMC runs the National Intelligence Platform, or NIP, an internal government web portal that holds classified citizen information, like national identification details, cell phone registration and cell data records, criminal profiles and other information.
Various law enforcement and intelligence agencies have user accounts on the NIP portal provided by the NTMC.
NTMC’s own investigation concluded that the agents used the NIP platform more frequently than others, and accessed and collected information that was not relevant to them.
“Considering the context, such irrelevant access and unlawful handover of extremely sensitive classified data should be investigated to identify everyone involved in this and we also request for appropriate action against all those identified/involved,” the letter read.
Baker told TechCrunch that there were a “number of Telegram channels,” adding that one of them was called BD CYBER GANG.
TechCrunch could not identify the specific channel on Telegram.
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Do you have more information about this incident, or similar incidents? From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram, Keybase and Wire @lorenzofb, or email. You can also reach out to Zulkarnain Saer Khan on Signal at +36707723819, or on X @ZulkarnainSaer. You also can contact TechCrunch via SecureDrop.
Baker told TechCrunch that it appears that the two agents sent the information to the administrator of at least one Telegram group, who then attempted to sell it.
Baker said that the two agents have been notified of the investigation.
Because of the investigation, all NIP users from ATU and RAB 6 have had their access suspended “until the involved officials are identified, and proper action is taken,” according to the letter.
Baker confirmed the suspended access, saying that if agents “need any information for investigation purposes they can collect through Police and RAB HQ.”
Spokespeople for Bangladesh’s Ministry of Home Affairs and ATU did not respond to multiple requests for comment. A person identifying only as an “operations officer” at RAB 6 told TechCrunch that the agency had no comment.
In both cases, the leaks were found by Viktor Markopoulos, a researcher who works at Bitcrack Cyber Security.
While those were significant cases of data exposure, this incident allegedly involving the ATU and RAB 6 agents is potentially more damaging, given that the agents allegedly sold information online in an attempt to profit from their privileged access to classified personal information.
Although the incident is under investigation, a well-placed source within the government told TechCrunch that there are still officials who are offering to sell citizens’ data.
Wagely, a fintech out of Indonesia, made a name for itself with earned wage access: a way for workers in Southeast Asian countries to get advances on their salaries without resorting to higher-interest loans. With half a million people now using the platform, the startup has expanded that business into a wider “financial wellness” platform, and to give that effort an extra push, the company’s now raised $23 million.
The news is especially notable given the funding crash that startups in Indonesia have faced in the last couple of years, underscoring how developing countries have been hit even harder than developed markets in in the current bear market for technology. Indonesia’s Financial Services Authority in January said that Indonesian startup funding was down 87% in 2023 compared to a year before, down to $400 million from $3.3 billion.
That economic pressure is not exclusive to startups: ordinary people are under even more pressure.
While the consumption of goods and services has grown significantly, salary growth across sectors has not kept up. Workers are on the lookout for solutions including credit to meet their needs between fixed-payroll cycles.
But access to credit is not all-pervasive.
Millions of workers are underbanked and lack credit history. In some cases, such workers are forced to find alternatives, which can be to find a job that pays wages in a shorter interval than a traditional pay cycle of a month. This results in a higher attrition rate for employers. Similarly, workers who cannot loan money from a bank or financial institution in the event of an emergency often get trapped by loan sharks, who charge exorbitant interest rates and follow predatory practices. It’s no surprise that earned wage access has been held up by global banking institutions like JP Morgan as a financial panacea: it’s important for both employees and employers.
The concept of earned wage access has been prevalent among companies in developed markets like the U.S. and U.K. — especially after the COVID-19 pandemic impacted jobs and household incomes for many individuals. In 2022, Walmart acquired earned wage access provider Even to offer early pay access to its employees. Other big U.S. companies, including Amazon, McDonald’s and Uber, also offer employees early wage access programs.
Wagely, headquartered in Jakarta, brought that model to Indonesia in 2020 and entered Bangladesh in 2021. The startup believes offering earned wage access in these markets is even crucial, since 75% of Asian workers live paycheck to paycheck and have significantly lower salaries than their counterparts in the U.S. and other developed countries.
Image Credits: Wagely
“We’re partnering with companies to provide their workers a way to withdraw their salaries on any day of the month,” Kevin Hausburg, co-founder and CEO at Wagely, said in an interview.
Like other earned wage access providers, Wagely charges a nominal flat membership fee to employees withdrawing their salaries early.
Hausburg told TechCrunch the fee, which he describes as a “salary ATM charge,” generally stays between $1 and $2.50, depending on the partial wage employees withdraw, as well as their location and financial well-being.
Wagely, which has a headcount of about 100 employees, with approximately 60 in Indonesia and the remaining 40 in Bangladesh, has disbursed over $25 million in salaries in 2023 alone through nearly one million transactions and serving 500,000 workers.
Since its last funding round announced in March 2022, the startup, the founder said, saw about five times growth in its revenues and tripled its business from last year, without disclosing the specifics. These revenues come solely from the membership fee that the startup charges employees. Nonetheless, it still burns cash.
“We’re burning cash because it’s a volume game,” said Hausburg. “However, the margins and the business model itself is sustainable at scale.”
While Wagely has been Southeast Asia’s early earned wage access provider, the region has added a few new players. This means the startup has some competition. Also, there are global companies with the potential to take on Wagely by entering Indonesia and Bangladesh over time.
However, Hausburg said the convenience makes the startup a distinct player. It takes three taps from downloading Wagely’s app or accessing its website through a browser to having money in your bank account, the founder stated.
“This is something that no other competitor is even close to because other earned wage access companies are focusing on different things,” he said.
One of the areas where global earned wage access providers have shifted their focus nowadays is lending — in some cases, to lend money to employers. Some platforms also include advertising to generate revenues by offering different products they cross-sell to workers. However, Hausburg said the startup did not go with advertising or any other services that did not make any sense for the workers it services.
“Focus on what your customers need. Don’t get distracted, and don’t try to optimize for short-term revenue,” he noted.
Wagely’s business model works on economies of scale. That is, to become profitable, it needs to expand from half a million people to multiple millions.
With Capria Ventures leading this latest round, the startup plans to utilize the funding to go deeper into Indonesia and Bangladesh, expand into financial services, including savings and insurance, and explore generative AI-based use cases, including automated document processing and local language conversational interfaces for workers.
Recently, Wagely partnered with Bangladesh’s commercial bank Mutual Trust Bank and Visa to launch a prepaid salary card for employees in the country, which has a smartphone penetration rate of around 40% but a vast infrastructure for card-based payments and ATMs. It’s keeping an eye on other Asian countries but does not have immediate to enter any new markets anytime soon, the founder said.
Wagely is not disclosing the amount of debt versus equity in this round but has confirmed it’s a mixture of the two. The debt portion would be specifically used to fund salary disbursements. It was also the first time the startup, which received a total of about $15 million in equity before this funding round, raised a debt.
“It is unsustainable to grow the business just with equity, especially because we are pre-disbursing earned salaries to workers, and the only way that you can build this business sustainably is with having a very strong partner on the debt side that provides you that capital. And now was the time,” Hausburg told TechCrunch.
Employers do not provide advance payment of wages by themselves; instead, they reimburse Wagely for the amount disbursed to employees at the end of the pay cycle. This requires the startup to maintain a sufficient reserve to cover advance wages for employees registered on the platform. The startup conducts “rigorous checks” on employer partners and works with publicly listed and well-compliant, reputable private companies to mitigate the risk of non-repayment by employers for the advanced wages provided to employees after the pay cycle concludes.
“The Wagely team has demonstrated excellent execution with impressive growth in providing a sustainable and win-win financial solution for underserved blue-collar workers and employers,” said Dave Richards, managing partner, Capria Ventures, in a prepared statement.
A fire at a six-story shopping mall in the Bangladeshi capital overnight killed at least 43 people and injured dozens of others, the health minister said Friday.
Health Minister Samanta Lal Sen said the fire broke out late Thursday in the building in Dhaka’s downtown area. Firefighters rescued survivors and pulled out bodies, and by early Friday, at least 43 people died and at least 22 others were being treated, he said.
Firefighters work to extinguish a fire in a commercial building that killed at least 43 people in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on February 29, 2024.
MUNIR UZ ZAMAN/AFP via Getty Images
Firefighters said the fire began in a popular restaurant on the first floor of the mall in a busy commercial district at the heart of the capital, and that many people were trapped by the fire.
Video posted on social media by the Bangladesh Fire Service & Civil Defence showed firefighters on a crane helping to evacuate people from the upper levels of the mall as a large crowd of emergency responders waited for them on the ground.
The cause of the fire could not immediately be determined.
Sen said at least 33 people, including women and children, were declared dead at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital, while at least 10 others died after being taken to the Sheikh Hasina National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery.
Firefighters work to extinguish a fire in a commercial building that killed at least 43 people in Dhaka on February 29, 2024.
MUNIR UZ ZAMAN/AFP via Getty Images
More than a dozen firefighting units were deployed to douse the fire that broke out at the Green Cozy Cottage Shopping Mall, said Fire Service and Civil Defense Director General Brig. Gen. Md. Main Uddin.
At 75 people, including 42 who were unconscious, were rescued from the building, rescuers said.
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Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina once joined her rivals in a fight to restore democracy but her long reign in power has been marked by arrests of opposition leaders, crackdowns on free speech and suppression of dissent.
Hasina, 76, won a fourth straight term and fifth overall in power by sweeping Sunday’s general election, which was boycotted by the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) for the second time in the last three polls.
Hasina branded the main opposition party a “terrorist organisation”.
The daughter of the country’s founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who led Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan, Hasina was fortunate to have been visiting Europe when most of her family members were assassinated in a military coup in 1975.
Born in 1947 in southwestern Bangladesh, then East Pakistan, Hasina was the eldest of five children. She graduated with a degree in Bengali literature from Dhaka University in 1973 and gained political experience as a go-between for her father and his student followers.
She returned to Bangladesh from India, where she lived in exile, in 1981 and later joined hands with political foe, BNP chief and former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, to lead a popular uprising for democracy that toppled military ruler Hossain Mohammad Ershad from power in 1990.
But the alliance with Zia did not last long and the bitter and deep-rooted rivalry between the two women, often called the “battling begums”, went on to dominate Bangladeshi politics for decades.
Hasina first served a term as prime minister in 1996 but lost to Zia five years later. The pair were then imprisoned on corruption charges in 2007 after a coup by a military-backed government.
The charges were dropped and they were free to contest an election the following year. Hasina won in a landslide and has been in power ever since.
As time went on, she became increasingly autocratic and her rule has been marked by mass arrests of political opponents and activists, forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.
The 78-year-old Zia meanwhile is in ailing health and confined to hospital after corruption charges saw her sentenced to a 17-year prison term in 2018. Top BNP leaders have been sent behind bars while Zia’s eldest son and heir apparent Tarique Rahman is in exile in Britain.
Rights groups have warned of a virtual one-party rule by Hasina’s Awami League.
Hasina refused BNP demands to resign and allow a neutral authority to run the election, accusing the opposition of instigating antigovernment protests that have rocked Dhaka since late October and killed at least 14 people.
Both Hasina and her rivals have accused their opponents of trying to create chaos and violence to thwart political peace and jeopardise the democracy that has yet to take firm root in the South Asian country of 170 million people.
Hasina said she did not need to prove the credibility of the election to anyone. “What is important is if the people of Bangladesh will accept this election.”
Asif Nazrul, professor of law at Dhaka University, told Al Jazeera Hasina is a “shrewd” politician but history will remember her as a leader “who stayed in power through repression, not popular mandate”.
“Never in the history of this region has a politician stayed in power despite lacking people’s mandate,” he said. “In fact, I would call her unpopular now as [Sunday’s] turnout has proven what percentage of people’s support Hasina and her party has.”
Nazrul said Hasina has “set up a milestone before the world on how a leader can establish complete autocracy in a nation in the garb of democracy”.
“But that’s not a legacy one should be proud of,” he said.
Mixed legacy of 15-year rule
Hasina has been praised by supporters for leading Bangladesh through a remarkable economic boom, largely on the back of the mostly female factory workforce powering its garment export industry.
Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest countries when it gained independence from Pakistan in 1971, has grown an average of more than 6 percent each year since 2009.
Poverty has plummeted and more than 95 percent of the country’s 170 million people now have access to electricity, with per capita income overtaking India in 2021.
Hasina also received international acclaim for opening Bangladesh’s doors to hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees fleeing a 2017 military crackdown in neighbouring Myanmar.
She has been hailed for a decisive crackdown on hardline Muslim groups after five homegrown extremists stormed a Dhaka cafe popular with Western expatriates and killed 22 people in 2016.
But Hasina’s intolerance towards dissent has given rise to resentment at home and expressions of concern from the Western powers.
Five top Muslim leaders and a senior opposition figure were executed over the past decade after convictions for crimes against humanity committed during the country’s brutal 1971 liberation war.
Instead of healing the wounds of that conflict, the trials triggered mass protests and deadly clashes. Her opponents branded the trials a farce, saying they were a politically motivated exercise designed to silence dissent.
The United States imposed sanctions on an elite branch of Bangladesh’s security forces and seven of its top officers over charges of widespread human rights abuses.
Meanwhile, the economy has also slowed sharply since the Russia-Ukraine war pushed up prices of fuel and food imports, forcing Bangladesh to turn last year to the International Monetary Fund for a $4.7bn bailout.
Inflation was 9.5 percent in November, one of the highest in decades, and tackling it will be one of Hasina’s biggest challenges in her next term while the spotlight will be on how she deals with upholding democracy.
Munshi Faiz Ahmed, former director-general of Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies, a state-funded think tank on security and strategic issues, called Hasina “perhaps the most strategic political maneuverer in Bangladesh’s history”.
Ahmed, also a former Bangladeshi ambassador to China, told Al Jazeera that one should be mindful of the conditions in which Hasina operated in the last decade: a massive population cramped in a small land with scant mineral resources, a divided and opinionated public, and continuous pressure from the global and regional powers.
“She skilfully handled all those factors and led Bangladesh to a position of prosperity and importance. As a politician, she is more competent than anyone else in recent history,” he said.
In the aftermath of a tainted election, Ahmed said Hasina had been successful in tackling Western pressure so far and at the same time was able to establish good relations with China, India and Russia – all of which have backed her government.
“It’s no longer a unipolar world, it’s rather multipolar. So, I don’t think her government will face any problem now.”
A labor court in Bangladesh’s capital Monday sentenced Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus to six months in jail for violating the country’s labor laws.
Yunus, who pioneered the use of microcredit to help impoverished people, was present in court and was granted bail. The court gave Yunus 30 days to appeal the verdict and sentence.
Grameen Telecom, which Yunus founded as a non-profit organization, is at the center of the case.
Sheikh Merina Sultana, head of the Third Labor Court of Dhaka, said in her verdict that Yunus’ company violated Bangladeshi labor laws. She said at least 67 Grameen Telecom workers were supposed to be made permanent employees but were not, and a “welfare fund” to support the staff in cases of emergency or special needs was never formed. She also said that, following company policy, 5% of Grameen’s dividends were supposed to be distributed to staff but was not.
Sultana found Yunus, as chairman of the company, and three other company directors guilty, sentencing each to six months in jail. Yunus was also fined 30,000 takas, or $260.
Yunus said he would appeal.
“We are being punished for a crime we did not commit. It was my fate, the nation’s fate. We have accepted this verdict, but will appeal this verdict and continue fighting against this sentence,” the 83-year-old economist told reporters after the verdict was announced.
A defense lawyer criticized the ruling, saying it was unfair and against the law. “We have been deprived of justice,” said attorney Abdullah Al Mamun.
Professor Muhammad Yunus is gesturing in front of the court after being sentenced to six months of imprisonment in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on January 1, 2024.
Kazi Salahuddin Razu/NurPhoto via Getty Images
But the prosecution was happy with what they said was an expected verdict.
“We think business owners will now be more cautious about violating labor laws. No one is above the law,” prosecutor Khurshid Alam Khan told The Associated Press.
Grameen Telecom owns 34.2% of the country’s largest mobile phone company, Grameenphone, a subsidiary of Norway’s telecom giant Telenor.
As Yunus is known to have close connections with political elites in the West, especially in the United States, many think the verdict could negatively impact Bangladesh’s relationship with the U.S.
But Foreign Secretary Masud Bin Momen on Monday said relations between Bangladesh and the U.S. would likely not be affected by an issue involving a single individual.
“It is normal not to have an impact on the state-to-state relations for an individual,” the United News of Bangladesh agency quoted Momen as saying.
The Nobel laureate faces an array of other charges involving alleged corruption and embezzlement.
Yunus’ supporters believe he’s being harassed because of frosty relations with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Bangladesh’s government has denied the allegation.
Monday’s verdict came as Bangladesh prepares for its general election on Jan. 7, amid a boycott by the country’s main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, led by former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, Hasina’s arch-enemy. The party said it didn’t have any confidence the premier’s administration would hold a free and fair election.
In August, more than 170 global leaders and Nobel laureates in an open letter urged Hasina to suspend all legal proceedings against Yunus.
The leaders, including former U.S. President Barack Obama, former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and more than 100 Nobel laureates, said in the letter that they were deeply concerned by recent threats to democracy and human rights in Bangladesh.
Hasina responded sharply and said she would welcome international experts and lawyers to come to Bangladesh to assess the legal proceedings and examine documents involving the charges against Yunus.
In 1983, Yunus founded Grameen Bank, which gives small loans to entrepreneurs who would not normally qualify for bank loans. The bank’s success in lifting people out of poverty led to similar microfinancing efforts in other countries.
Hasina’s administration began a series of investigations of Yunus after coming to power in 2008. She became enraged when Yunus announced he would form a political party in 2007 when a military-backed government ran the country and she was in prison, although he did not follow through on the plan.
Yunus had earlier criticized politicians in the country, saying they are only interested in money. Hasina called him a “bloodsucker” and accused him of using force and other means to recover loans from poor rural women as head of Grameen Bank.
In 2011, Hasina’s administration began a review of the bank’s activities. Yunus was fired as managing director for allegedly violating government retirement regulations. He was put on trial in 2013 on charges of receiving money without government permission, including his Nobel Prize award and royalties from a book.
What’s your money worth? A series from the front line of the cost of living crisis, where people who have been hit hard share their monthly expenses.
Name: Dipanwita Ridi
Age: 37
Occupation: Founder and chairperson of Animal Lovers of Bangladesh (ALB) animal shelter, the country’s first animal adoption shelter for strays; freelance content writer and translator.
Lives with: Two rescue cats – a 13-year-old female called Pitu and a six-month-old male named Pouch. Various stray cats – a female and five males – come and go as they please.
Lives in: A one-bedroom apartment in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.
Monthly household income: In August, Dipanwita earned 43,591 Bangladeshi taka ($390) from her freelance work.
The average monthly income is 7,614 taka ($68) nationwide and 10,951 taka ($98) in urban areas, according to the 2022 Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics Household Income and Expenditure Survey.
Total expenses for the month: 30,000 taka ($269) spent on rent, utilities, food and transport to attend a birthday and a wedding.
The Rana Plaza Collapse was supposed to be a turning point for all garment workers to gain more protection and earn fairer wages. Ten years later, garment workers are still sewing hidden cries for help in clothes and fighting for livable wages in brutal clashes with Bangladeshi police.
Approximately 5,000 workers who were responsible for sewing clothes for Zara, H&M, and other fast-fashion brands went on strike for an increase in wages. It seems that the workers will not stop until they get $209 a month, since they’ve refused the measly 56% minimum wage increase. The workers’ demands aren’t even significant, since monthly costs for a single person in Dhaka are around $402 excluding rent.
Protesters have had violent encounters with local police, resulting in multiple deaths and injuries. The police have used tear gas and rubber bullets against the striking workers. Trade unionist Nazma Akhter spoke to The Guardian, saying “The proposed new wage is unacceptable. We reject it and demand a revision,” adding “Global fashion brands must also speak out, … What use is all their talk of female empowerment when the women who make their clothes are being murdered on the streets?”
The garment workers have the power to stagnate the country’s economy as well, given that Bangladesh is the world’s second-largest apparel exporter. Fast fashion clothing relies on overconsumption, as people buy more clothes they don’t need to keep these multinational corporations afloat. And since fast fashion isn’t produced to last, consumers are forced into a cycle or buying and rebuying.
Bangladesh is raising the minimum wage for garment workers by 56% after workers led mass protests.
Weeks of strikes had shut down factories for brands like Gap, H&M, and Zara.
Worker groups plan to keep protesting, saying the new $113/month wage falls far short of fair pay. pic.twitter.com/D2K0cPBHwH
Workers have hardly anything to lose, and so much to gain by fighting for livable wages. So the next time a sparkly H&M dress goes on sale for the next Taylor Swift concert, ask yourself: why are concert tickets worth $400? And why are garment workers making barely anything to churn out fast fashion in dingy sweatshops?
In the early morning of the last day of August, Parisians experienced for the first time a practice normally confined to tropical regions — authorities fumigating the city against the tiger mosquito. The event was a tangible confirmation of what public health stats already showed: Dengue, the deadly mosquito-borne disease, had well and truly arrived in Europe.
In 2022, Europe saw more cases of locally acquired dengue than in the whole of the previous decade. The rise marks both a public health threat and a corresponding market opportunity for dengue vaccines and treatments; news that should spur the pharma industry to boost investment into the neglected disease.
On the face of it, this shift would appear to benefit not only countries like France but also nations like Bangladesh and the Philippines that have long battled dengue.
But that assumption could be fatally flawed, experts told POLITICO.
People working in the field say the rise of dengue in the West could, in fact, make it harder to get lifesaving drugs to those who need them most, because pharma companies develop tools that are less effective in countries where the dengue burden is the highest or because wealthy nations end up hoarding these medicines and vaccines.
“It might look like a good thing — and it is a good thing — that we’re getting more products developed, but does it then create a two-tier system where high-income populations get access to it and then we still have the access gap for low- and middle- income countries?” asked Lindsay Keir, director of the science and policy advisory team at think tank Policy Cures Research.
Killer invading mosquitoes
Climate change and migration mean the mosquitoes that transmit dengue, as well as other diseases such as chikungunya and Zika, are setting up shop in Europe. The most recent annual data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control shows that, in 2022, Europe saw 71 cases of locally acquired dengue: 65 in France and six in Spain.
While dengue usually results in mild or no symptoms, it can also lead to high fever, severe headache and vomiting. Severe dengue can cause bleeding from the gums, abdominal pain and, in some cases, death.
So far, the mosquito has mostly been confined to Southern Europe but it’s a worry across the Continent. In Belgium, the national public health research institute Sciensano has even launched an app where members of the public can submit photos of any Asian tiger mosquitos they spot.
The diseases spread by these mosquitoes have traditionally fallen under the umbrella of neglected tropical diseases, a group of infections that affect mainly low-income countries and struggle to attract research and development investment. But this is changing.
Policy Cures Research, which publishes an annual report on R&D investment into neglected diseases, removed dengue vaccines from their assessment in 2013. Dengue was no longer seen as an area where there was market failure, due to the emergence of a market that the private sector could tap into.
The organization is still tracking dengue drugs and biologics and their 2022 analysis showed a 33 percent increase in funding for research into non-vaccine products compared to the previous year, with industry investment reaching a record high of $28 million.
Climate change and migration mean the mosquitoes that transmit dengue, as well as other diseases such as chikungunya and Zika, are setting up shop in Europe | Lukas Schulze/Getty Images
Sibilia Quilici, executive director of the vaccine maker lobby group Vaccines Europe, said the most recent pipeline review of members found that roughly 10 percent were targeting neglected diseases. There is more R&D happening in this area, said Quilici.
Across the major drugmakers, J&J is working on a dengue antiviral treatment and MSD has a dengue vaccine in their pipeline, while Sanofi has a second yellow fever jab in development. Two dengue vaccines are already approved in the EU — one from Sanofi and another from Takeda. Moderna recently told POLITICO that it is looking closely at a dengue vaccine candidate and it already has a Zika candidate in the works.
For the few, not the many
But just because there might soon be larger markets for Big Pharma doesn’t mean the products will be suitable for the populations that have been waiting years for these tools.
Rachael Crockett, senior policy advocacy manager at the non-profit Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), said increased pharma investment in a particular disease won’t necessarily lead to products developed that are globally relevant. “Industry will — and governments are also more likely to — focus on prevention,” she said.
That means tools such as vaccines will be prioritized; but in countries where dengue is endemic, the rainy season completely overburdens their health systems and what they desperately need are treatments, said Crockett.
She also said a massive increase in investment without a structure to ensure access to resulting products means “we have absolutely no guarantee that there isn’t going to be hoarding, [that] there isn’t going to be high prices.” Case in point: The U.S. national stockpile of Ebola vaccines, which exists despite there never having been an Ebola outbreak in the country.
But just because there might soon be larger markets for Big Pharma doesn’t mean the products will be suitable for the populations that have been waiting years for these tools | Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images
Underlying many of these fears are the mistakes of the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw countries with less cash and political heft at the back of the queue when it came to vaccines.
Lisa Goerlitz, head of German charity Deutsche Stiftung Weltbevölkerung (DSW)’s Brussels office, warned if drug development picks up because of a growing market in high-income countries, then accessibility, affordability and other criteria that make it suitable for low resource settings might not be prioritized.
Vaccines Europe’s Quilici sought to allay these concerns, pointing to the pharma industry’s Berlin Declaration, a proposal to reserve an allocation of real-time production of vaccines in a health crisis. Quilici said this was a “really strong commitment …which comes right from the lessons learnt from COVID-19 and which could definitely overcome the challenges we had during the pandemic, if it is taken seriously.”
CORRECTION: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Lisa Goerlitz.
Dhaka, Bangladesh – Bangladesh’s foreign minister has said his country was not “bothered” by the US visa curbs on unnamed Dhaka officials for undermining the election process as part of Washington’s push for free and fair general elections slated to be held early next year.
“The US is a democracy, so are we,” AK Abdul Momen told Al Jazeera on Saturday.
“As a global power, they, of course, can exercise power over others but we are not bothered because we know how to hold an acceptable election,” he said, echoing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s assertion that her government is capable of conducting free and fair elections.
The US Department of State on Thursday announced to impose visa restrictions on Bangladeshi individuals “responsible for, or complicit in, undermining the democratic election process in Bangladesh”.
A statement issued by the State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller mentioned “these individuals include members of law enforcement, the ruling party, and the political opposition” and “their immediate family may be found ineligible for entry into the United States.”
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has asserted that her government is capable of conducting free and fair elections. [File: Anupam Nath/AP Photo]
The State Department did not release any names as the “[visa]records are confidential under US law,” Bryan Schiller, US Embassy spokesperson in Bangladesh told the local media.
The visa restrictions come nearly four months after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned of curbs, as Washington has expressed support for “free, fair and peaceful national elections” in the South Asian nation of 160 million people.
Back then, Bangladesh’s foreign ministry had assured free and fair elections. However, the Hasina government has continued to target political opposition and activists, including the jailing of two leading human rights activists on September 14.
The last two national elections – 2014 and 2018 – were marred by vote-rigging charges and opposition boycott. The Awami League (AL) party of Prime Minister Hasina won both the elections. It has denied the elections were rigged.
The US State Department, moreover, warned that additional persons found to be responsible for, or complicit in, undermining the democratic election process in Bangladesh may also be found ineligible for US visas in the future.
Minister Momen meanwhile, said his party’s “rank and files” are not worried about the visa sanctions as most of them want to stay in this “prospering country”.
“Our voters are also not bothered because they probably are not thinking of going to the US at all.”
‘Targeted sanctions’
Tensions surrounding the upcoming national election, scheduled to be held in January next year, have already reached a boiling point, with the main opposition – the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) – and its allies, staging regular street protests.
They are demanding the installation of a neutral caretaker government to conduct the elections. However, the provision of caretaker government was nullified in 2011 by the Supreme Court. The opposition has said the court ruling was influenced by the governing Awami League, which has been in power since 2008. A caretaker administration oversaw the 2008 election.
The opposition led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party has organised several street protests in recent months demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Hasina and the formation of a caretaker government. [File: Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters]
Western powers, including the US and the European Union – the two main destinations of Bangladesh’s multibillion-dollar garment export – have repeatedly expressed concern about free and fair elections and rights violations under the current government.
Experts have argued that the latest visa sanction by the US is just a reflection of their concerns. Last year, Washington slapped sanctions on notorious Bangladesh paramilitary forces – Rapid Action Battalion – for extrajudicial killings. Dhaka has also been not invited to the two editions of the high-profile Summit for Democracy organised by President Joe Biden’s administration.
Former Bangladesh ambassador to the US, Humayun Kabir, said the visa curb is to ensure a free and fair election.
“The fact is, those who are actually impeding the fair election process should be worried as the US government, of course, did proper groundwork before imposing these sanctions,” he told Al Jazeera.
US-based Bangladesh-American geopolitical analyst Shafquat Rabbee told Al Jazeera that given the high-voltage engagement and communications coming from the US government regarding Bangladesh’s upcoming election, “It is certain that the US has made a determination rather than trying to preserve Bangladesh’s democracy, at least nominally”.
Rabbee believed, that as elections remain extremely popular in Bangladesh, the incremental cost of trying to preserve that nominally democratic culture for the US is not much. “So the US is trying using less invasive approaches like targeted sanctions,” he said.
He also said it is highly likely the US will bring more targeted sanctions, next time perhaps on Bangladesh’s business community and judiciary if the country’s democratic backsliding continues.
Opposition parties have welcomed the US step, with Rumeen Farhana, a former member of parliament from the main opposition BNP, saying that “the whole world has seen how [Awami League] had used every bit of state machinery, including bureaucracy, law enforcement and judiciary to steal elections”.
“Not once, twice,” she said.
The international affairs secretary of the ruling Awami League party, however, said his party was not concerned by the visa curbs.
Shammi Ahmed told Al Jazeera that the US or other global powers are “very interested” to see a “fair election” in Bangladesh as the country “is no longer a basket case, rather an emerging economic power”.
“And we have achieved this under the leadership of Sheikh Hasina,” Ahmed said.
“We have trust in our own people and we trust in elections. The ballot paper will decide our fate, not global powers,” she said.
Bangladesh is battling its worst dengue outbreak on record, with more than 600 people killed and 135,000 cases reported since April, the World Health Organization said Wednesday, as one of its experts blamed the climate crisis and El Nino weather pattern for driving the surge.
The country’s health care system is straining under the influx of sick people, and local media have reported hospitals are facing a shortage of beds and staff to care for patients. There were almost 10,000 hospitalizations on August 12 alone, according to WHO.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a news briefing Wednesday that of the 650 people who have died since the outbreak began in April, 300 were reported in August.
While dengue fever is endemic in Bangladesh, with infections typically peaking during the monsoon season, this year the uptick in cases started much earlier – toward the end of April.
Tedros said WHO is supporting the Bangladeshi government and authorities “to strengthen surveillance, lab capacity, clinical management, vector control, risk communication and community engagement,” during the outbreak.
“We have trained doctors and deployed experts on the ground. We have also provided supplies to test for dengue and support care for patients,” he said.
A viral infection, dengue causes flu-like symptoms, including piercing headaches, muscle and joint pains, fever and full body rashes. It is transmitted to humans through the bite of an infected Aedes mosquito and there is no specific treatment for the disease.
Dengue is endemic in more than 100 countries and every year, 100 million to 400 million people become infected, according to WHO.
All 64 districts across Bangladesh have been affected by the outbreak but the capital Dhaka – home to more than 20 million people – has been the worst-hit city, according to WHO. Though cases there are starting to stabilize.
“Cases are starting to decline in the capital Dhaka but are increasing in other parts of the country,” Tedros said.
Dhaka is one of the most densely populated cities in the world and rapid unplanned urbanization has exacerbated outbreaks.
“There is a water supply problem in Dhaka, so people keep water in buckets and plastic containers in their bathrooms or elsewhere in the home. Mosquitoes can live there all year round,” Kabirul Bashar, professor at Jahangirnagar University’s Zoology department, wrote in the Lancet journal last month.
“Our waste management system is not well planned. Garbage piles up on the street; you see a lot of little plastic containers with pools of water in them. We also have multi-story buildings with car parks in the basements. People wash their vehicles down there, which is ideal for the mosquitoes.”
To cope with the onslaught of infections, Bangladesh has repurposed six Covid-19 hospitals to care for dengue patients and requested help from WHO to help detect and manage cases earlier, WHO said.
Climate crisis spreading and amplifying outbreaks
The record number of dengue cases and deaths in Bangladesh comes as the country has seen an “unusual episodic amount of rainfall, combined with high temperatures and high humidity, which have resulted in an increased mosquito population throughout Bangladesh,” WHO said in August.
Those warm, wet conditions make the perfect breeding ground for disease-carrying mosquitoes and as the planet continues to rapidly heat due to the burning of fossil fuels, outbreaks will become more common in new regions of the world.
The global number of dengue cases has already increased eight-fold in the past two decades, according to WHO.
“In 2000, we had about half a million cases and … in 2022 we recorded over 4.2 million,” said Raman Velayudhan, WHO’s head of the global program on control of neglected tropical diseases in July.
As the climate crisis worsens, mosquito-borne diseases like dengue, Zika, chikungunya and yellow fever will likely continue to spread and have an ever greater impact on human health.
“We are seeing more and more countries experiencing the heavy burden of these diseases,” said Abdi Mahamud, WHO’s alert and response director in the health emergencies program.
Mahamud said the climate crisis and this year’s El Nino weather pattern – which brings warmer, wetter weather to parts of the world – are worsening the problem.
This year, dengue has hit South America severely with Peru grappling with its worst outbreak on record. Cases in Florida prompted authorities to put several counties on alert. In Asia, a spike in cases has hit Sri Lanka, Thailand and Malaysia, among other nations. And countries in sub-Sarahan Africa, like Chad, have also reported outbreaks.
Calling these outbreaks a “canary in the coalmine of the climate crisis,” Mahamud said “global solidarity” and support is needed to deal with the worsening epidemic.
Dhaka, Bangladesh – Mohammad Jalil still has nightmares recounting the harrowing journey he took last October on a rickety boat in the Bay of Bengal.
Jalil, a 26-year-old Rohingya refugee from Bangladesh’s Kutupalong camp, paid around $1,500 to an agent who promised him a safe journey to Malaysia.
A month later, he found himself on board an overcrowded fishing trawler drifting aimlessly on a fierce sea for about a week.
“We had no food and the children were crying in hunger. The people who were in charge of the trawler beat us mercilessly. On the ninth or 10th day – I can’t remember – the boat sank,” Jalil told Al Jazeera.
He, along with a few others, swam for hours before being rescued by the Bangladeshi coastguard.
“Some women and children couldn’t make it and drowned,” he said. “All my money is gone. I have lost everything.”
Mohammad Jalil made an unsuccessful bid to flee to Malaysia last year [Faisal Mahmud/Al Jazeera]
Jalil, however, is lucky to be alive.
The United Nations says 2022 was one of the deadliest years for the Rohingya at sea after nearly 400 refugees perished while making treacherous boat trips from Myanmar and Bangladesh across the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal.
Jalil’s close shave with death and his desperation to flee Bangladesh underscores the plight of nearly a million Rohingya, most of whom fled their native Myanmar on August 25, 2017 after its military launched what the UN described as a campaign with “genocidal intent” against the mostly-Muslim minority.
As the Myanmar military began to kill Rohingya men, rape women and burn their villages that day, more than 750,000 of them fled to neighbouring Bangladesh where they were sheltered in the southern Cox’s Bazar district – now the world’s largest refugee camp.
Since then, the refugees observe August 25 as “Genocide Day” to demand justice and seek safe and voluntary repatriation to their homes in Myanmar, which is facing a genocide trial at the International Court of Justice at The Hague.
‘Caged bird’
The risky sea ventures to Malaysia and other Southeast Asian nations are just one of many reminders that the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh lead a precarious existence, losing hope of safely returning to their now military-ruled homeland and being shunned by the rest of the world.
Jalil thought he could start a new life in Bangladesh when he arrived in 2017. But in the last six years, he says he has found himself in a tight corner with no work and no way of moving outside the barbed wires of the refugee camps.
“I felt like a caged bird. I learnt that those who had made it to Malaysia were earning well. That’s why I risked all my savings. Now I am back to square one,” he told Al Jazeera.
Journalist Kaamil Ahmed interviewed hundreds of such refugees for his book, I Feel No Peace, and found that they have almost lost hope of returning safely to Myanmar.
“They also believe they can’t live dignified lives in the refugee camps,” Ahmed told Al Jazeera. “These refugees are utterly stateless and marginalised wherever they are.”
In December 2021, Bangladesh shut down all the refugee-run schools in which Rohingya children were being taught the Myanmar curriculum up to Grade 10. Nur Kabir, who ran the largest of these schools, told Al Jazeera his students are now passing their days doing nothing.
“What will they become when they grow up? Why can’t our children deserve better?” the 28-year-old teacher asked.
Shamsud Douza, the Additional Refugee, Relief and Repatriation Commissioner, told Al Jazeera the refugee-run schools taught in Bangla language, which the Bangladesh government prohibits in order “to keep Rohingya from integrating and remaining permanently in the country”.
“We want their [Rohingya] safe and voluntary return to their homeland,” Douza said. But he also admitted that several repatriation attempts have failed and prospects of a safe repatriation in the near future are “very dim”.
Abdur Rahim, a Rohingya community leader, told Al Jazeera they are not living a “dignified life” in the camps. “We still long for our homelands but we fear the situation there is not at all suitable for our return.”
Abdur Rahim, a Rohingya community leader at the Bangladesh camps [Faisal Mahmud/Al Jazeera]
Meanwhile, the patience of the host community is thinning. A 2019 survey conducted by the UNDP revealed that two-thirds of the residents of Cox’s Bazar believe they are suffering due to the Rohingya influx.
“Four years later, things have gotten even worse,” Saikat Rafi, an NGO worker posted in Cox’s Bazar, told Al Jazeera.
Rafi, who works with both the refugees and the host community, said the latter has become more hostile as they feel the Rohingya are “getting foreign donations” and yet “stealing their jobs”.
Matlub Ali, a construction worker at Cox’s Bazar, alleged the refugees have cut barbed wires at nearly 150 places in the sprawling camps and sneak out to offer their labour at half the price. “We can’t get jobs because of them,” he told Al Jazeera.
Half a million children at risk: Charity
The Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh camps rely almost entirely on food aid as they are not allowed to leave the camps or formally work. Since March this year, the World Food Programme assistance to a million refugees was cut by a third to just $8 per month due to a funding shortfall.
As a result, the health and well-being of more than half a million children are at risk due to recent drastic cuts in food assistance, Save the Children charity said in a statement on Thursday.
“Even before the first food ration cuts, 45 percent of Rohingya families were not eating a sufficient diet and malnutrition was widespread in the camps, with 40 percent of children experiencing stunted growth,” the charity said.
“The humanitarian response is at breaking point,” it said, adding that the children are “in danger of becoming a lost generation”.
“They cannot remain stateless and unprotected, living their lives in isolated limbo. The international community should demonstrate it has not turned its back on them – and to properly fund the humanitarian programmes in the camps,” it added.
The Bangladesh government, however, says hosting the refugees is putting a strain on its economy. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina last year said the cost of running the camps is more than $1.2bn annually and only 48 percent of the pledged $881m assistance from the UN was met.
Regina de la Portilla, the UNHCR spokesperson in Bangladesh, told Al Jazeera the reduction in funding will have “a direct impact on people already living with minimum services”.
‘Permanent fixture within Bangladeshi territory’
In a statement earlier this week, the Human Rights Watch said the UN and concerned governments should continue to underscore that conditions for the safe, sustainable and dignified return of Rohingya to Myanmar do not currently exist.
The rights group added that the UN Security Council’s “inaction and government aid cutbacks are leaving Rohingya in even more desperate straits”.
“Rohingya on both sides of the Myanmar-Bangladesh border are trapped in stateless purgatory, denied their most basic rights, awaiting justice and the chance to go home,” said Shayna Bauchner, Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch.
“Moving ahead with repatriating Rohingya now would mean sending refugees back to the control of a ruthless and repressive junta, setting the stage for the next devastating exodus,” Bauchner said.
“Building conditions for the voluntary, safe, and dignified return of Rohingya will need a coordinated international response to establish rights-respecting civilian rule in Myanmar and achieve justice for past atrocities.”
Dr Delwar Hossain, director of East Asia Study Center at Dhaka University, told Al Jazeera the world’s attention has already moved from the Rohingya refugees and they possibly have become a “permanent fixture within the Bangladeshi territory”.
Hossain said the resurgence of violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state – where most Rohingya lived before 2017 exodus – has opened a dangerous fissure in Southeast Asia that threatens to divide the two most important religious faiths in the region: Buddhism and Islam.
“Faiths that have lived peacefully in this region for millennia have never had such high tensions. If it persists, it could pose a greater threat to the social stability of the whole region,” he said.
Early last month, Bangladesh and India rolled out bilateral trade in Indian rupees, which was billed by the two countries’ governments as a “landmark” settlement. They said it would not only boost their trade volume with each other, but also help them skirt the global dominance of the US dollar.
With a bilateral trade volume worth $16bn, India is Bangladesh’s second-largest trading partner after China. Through this deal, Bangladesh will be able to perform rupee transactions to the tune of $2bn — the amount it gets from its exports to India each year. The country imports $14bn worth of goods from its bigger South Asian neighbour annually.
Pointing out this huge trade imbalance, some Bangladeshi economists and financial analysts have expressed their scepticism over trading in rupees. While this arrangement would definitely benefit India and give impetus to its long-cherished aspiration to make the rupee a global currency for trade, they said it would not give Bangladesh any significant advantage.
This trade in rupees will not ease any pressure on the declining foreign reserves of Bangladesh – which, according to the latest calculations from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), now stand at $23.56bn, equal to four months of the country’s import bills – down from over $42bn a year ago, these experts said.
In a bid to halt further depletion of those reserves, Bangladesh has already toughened import rules, but that hasn’t provided much respite as the greenback comprises 75 percent of the country’s foreign reserves and the value of its currency, the taka, has depreciated against the US dollar by more than 25 percent in the last one year.
To avert excessive dependence on the United States dollar, Bangladesh Bank (BB), the country’s central bank, last year allowed businesses to settle payments for international trade through the Chinese yuan, whose stockpile is now 1.32 percent, up from 1 percent in 2017.
BB spokesperson Mezbaul Haque said the recent rupee trade provision is “another way of reducing dollar dependency”.
Experts, however, think otherwise.
“The calculation is simple,” said Zahid Hussain, former lead economist of the World Bank’s Dhaka office. “Bangladesh will need to settle its $12bn-plus trade deficit [with India] in dollars. Unless Indian exporters accept taka as a means of settlement, I don’t see how rupee trading will help cushion the foreign exchange reserve crisis.”
But there is no “obvious loss” from this arrangement for Bangladesh since the use of rupees in imports and exports is voluntary, Hussain added. “India wants to internationalise its currency, and it is taking a step in that direction. Bangladesh, being a friendly neighbour, is probably trying to help out,” he said.
Boon for some businesses
Some businesses say the rupee trade arrangement will actually benefit them. Mohammad Hatem, the owner of MB Knit Fashion, one of the largest garment factories in Bangladesh, told Al Jazeera that he will be able to save at least 6 percent of his costs because of direct transactions in rupees.
The rupee trade arrangement will benefit some businesses that import raw material from India [Mahmud Hossain Opu/Al Jazeera]
Hatem said that he imports a large chunk of his raw materials from India, and now he doesn’t need to bear the loss in conversion costs. “Earlier, we needed to convert taka to dollars and then rupees to dollars for trade. In doing so, we used to lose $6 per $100 in conversion costs. Now we can have direct transactions in rupees,” he said.
As of now, Bangladesh’s state-owned Sonali Bank, private Eastern Bank Limited (EBL), and the Bangladesh operation of India’s State Bank of India (SBI) have opened special nostro accounts in rupees with two Indian banks: SBI’s international services branch in Mumbai and ICICI Bank. A nostro account is an account opened by a bank in one country for foreign currency transactions at another country’s bank.
In these accounts, Bangladeshi exporters will receive their proceeds in rupees, and the balance will be used to pay for Indian imports. It means the mechanism can be used to settle import bills equal to only the export earnings. The market would decide on the exchange rate.
Officials from Unilever Bangladesh confirmed that they have already opened a letter of credit (LC) in rupees. The multinational giant controls over half of the $4bn Bangladeshi market for fast-moving consumer goods, and it imports 40 percent of the raw materials it needs from India.
Economist Hussain said he is finding it hard to figure out the savings in rupee transactions. “Imports from India used to be invoiced and paid in dollars, and now you can invoice and settle in rupees,” he said. “There was a single conversation then, and there is a single conversion now. Only the currency is different, so it is not clear to me where the transaction cost savings will come from.”
Financial analyst Zia Hassan told Al Jazeera that he is certain about one thing: This rupee trade settlement will not provide any reserve relief, as the dollar savings from import costs using the rupee will be offset by the nonreceipt of export earnings in dollars.
Hassan also argued that the rupee trade arrangement in its current design exposes Bangladeshi commercial banks and central banks holding large amounts of rupee reserves to potential arbitrage losses. “This is because, as an export-oriented nation, India obviously tends to favour rupee devaluation,” he said.
Hassan noted that a weak domestic currency makes a country’s exports cheaper and more competitive. So if the value of the rupee –which usually fluctuates way more than the US dollar – is reduced, the banks in Bangladesh will have to bear the losses, he said.
“Besides,” he noted, “many of the Indian exporters may resist receiving their export proceeds in rupees, preferring to earn dollars instead of rupees through exports.”
Will it reduce the trade deficit?
Over the last three years, Bangladesh’s exports to India have continuously exceeded the $1bn mark, and they surpassed $2bn for the first time in the previous fiscal year. While launching the rupee trade arrangement last month, BB Governor Abdur Rouf Talukder said it will enable Bangladesh “to increase exports to India manifold” as Indian customers will see that they are purchasing the products in their own currency and may consider Bangladeshi products as their own. “So,” he said, “I think it will open a new way for us to boost exports to India.”
Even so, Rashed Al Mahmud Titumir, professor of economics at Dhaka University, told Al Jazeera that this rupee trade arrangement is very unlikely to “foster any new trade creation between these two countries”.
The rupee trade will not help ease the pressure on Bangladesh’s dollar reserves, experts warned [Mahmud Hossain Opu/Al Jazeera]
India is still imposing anti-dumping duties on many Bangladeshi goods, which prohibits Bangladesh from creating any sustainable production network system with India for its goods. “Without new trade creation, I don’t see how this massive trade deficit will be reduced and help Bangladesh reap the benefit of rupee trade,” Titumir said.
SM Abul Kalam Azad, secretary general of the India-Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said that the rupee trade arrangement will help millions of Bangladeshis who travel to India each year for tourism, medical or educational purposes.
BB announced that by September, it will launch a dual currency card named “Taka Pay”, with which a person visiting India will be able to spend money in rupees worth $12,000 per year. “Trade aside, this will obviously help a huge number of common people in Bangladesh,” Azad said.
Growing trade in rupees
Since July of last year, India has pushed for increasing internationalisation of the rupee after its central bank — the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) — paved the way for global trade settlement in rupees. A total of 18 countries, including big economies like Germany, the United Kingdom, and Russia, have so far made bilateral trade arrangements in the currency with India.
Shafquat Rabbee, an adjunct faculty member at the University of Dallas’s business school, says that it is actually optimal for all parties in global trade settlements to use just one globally dominant currency. “That keeps transaction costs low and efficient,” he said.
Rabbee told Al Jazeera that most countries settle trades in US dollars and hold US dollars as reserve currencies “mostly because everybody else does so, too”.
“This inertia or status quo,” he said, “is powerful.”
Supporters of the BNP are calling on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to step down and for a caretaker government to be appointed, amid anger about the cost of living.
Bangladesh police have fired rubber bullets and tear gas at stone-throwing opposition party supporters blocking major roads in the capital Dhaka to demand the prime minister’s resignation.
Supporters of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) on Saturday set fire to buses and exploded petrol bombs, according to police and local media, as they demanded that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina step down and that the next election, expected early next year, be held under a neutral caretaker government.
The party, in disarray since its leader Khaleda Zia was jailed in 2018 on corruption charges, has held bigger protest rallies in recent months, including one on Friday, drawing tens of thousands of supporters amid anger about the cost of living.
On Saturday, the BNP said dozens of its supporters were injured. Police said at least 20 officers were hurt in the clashes. At least 90 people were arrested, while two senior BNP leaders were taken into police custody and later freed, police said.
Senior BNP leader Abdul Moyeen Khan denounced the police action as an “injustice”.
“Today’s rampant action … only confirmed the autocratic nature of the ruling regime and fully exposes their motives to remain in power through a rigged election,” he told the Reuters news agency, adding that police were seeking to curtail people’s “fundamental right of association”.
Faruq Ahmed, a spokesman for the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, said, “Our force was attacked without any reason. They were only trying to ease the traffic flow.”
“We had to fire tear gas and rubber bullets to control the situation,” he said.
TV footage showed police using batons to beat protesters on the street.
Police charge baton on a man during protests in Dhaka [Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters]
Al Jazeera’s Tanvir Chowdhury, reporting from Dhaka, said tension was palpable in the streets as residents braced for more violence. The governing Awami League party called for a counter-protest on Sunday, while the opposition called for more popular mobilisation on Monday.
“Food prices are spiralling out of control for average people they are not able to buy as they used to so there is a major discontent among the public,” Chowdhury said.
Protesters also accuse the government of staging fraudulent elections in 2014 and 2018.
Cracking down on protests
Western governments and rights groups have criticised the government for cracking down on anti-government protests.
Yasasmin Kaviratne, regional campaigner for South Asia at Amnesty International, said earlier this month that escalating tensions in Bangladesh were “alarming.”
“People should be free to protest and dissent. By muffling their voices, the government is signalling that having different political views is not tolerated within the country,” Kaviratne said, calling on police to “exercise restraint”.
Tanvir Shakil Joy, a member of parliament for the Awami League, rejected accusations of excessive use of force.
“BNP and affiliated parties torched more than seven buses and blocked the highway, then police took action because no political party can violate the movement rights of common people,” he told Al Jazeera.
According to the legislator, the government had expressly forbidden protesters of any affiliation to block the main entry points of the capital.
He said that the two senior BNP leaders were detained preemptively as they “could have been injured” in the protests and were released shortly after.
Prime Minister Hasina, who has maintained tight control since coming to power in 2009, has been accused of authoritarianism, human rights violations, cracking down on free speech and suppressing dissent while jailing her critics.
Aid agencies in Bangladesh and Myanmar say they are bracing for disaster and have launched a massive emergency plan as a powerful cyclone barrels toward millions of vulnerable people.
Since forming in the Bay of Bengal early Thursday, tropical Cyclone Mocha has intensified to a the equivalent of a Category 5 Atlantic hurricane, with sustained winds of 259 kilometers per hour (161 mph) and gusts of up to 315 kph (195 mph).
The storm is moving north at 20 kph (12 mph), according to the latest update from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center on Sunday.
Mocha is expected to make landfall Sunday afternoon local time (early Sunday morning ET), likely across Rakhine State in Myanmar and southeastern Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, host to the world’s largest refugee camp.
Outer bands are already impacting Myanmar and Bangladesh bringing rain and strong winds to the region. Conditions are expected to deteriorate further leading up to landfall, which brings the threats of flooding and landslides.
Disaster response teams and more than 3,000 local volunteers who have been trained in disaster preparedness and first aid have been put on standby in the camps, and a national cyclone early warning system is in place, according to Sanjeev Kafley, Head of Delegation of the IFRC Bangladesh Delegation.
Kafley said there are 7,500 emergency shelter kits, 4,000 hygiene kits and 2,000 water containers ready to be distributed.
In addition, mobile health teams and dozens of ambulances are ready to respond to refugees and Bangladeshis in need, with specially trained teams on stand by to help the elderly, children and the disabled, Arjun Jain, UN Principal Coordinator for the Rohingya Refugee Response in Bangladesh, told CNN.
“We expect this cyclone to have a more severe impact than any other natural disaster they have faced in the past five years,” said Jain. “At this stage, we just don’t know where the cyclone will make landfall and with what intensity. So we are hoping for the best but are preparing for the worst.”
Evacuations of people in low-lying areas or those with serious medical conditions had begun, he said.
In Myanmar, residents in coastal areas of Rakhine state and Ayeyarwady region have started to evacuate and seek shelter at schools and monasteries.
Hundreds of Red Cross volunteers are on standby and the agency is relocating vulnerable people and raising awareness of the storm in villages and townships, the IFRC’s Kafley said.
The last storm to make landfall with a similar strength was Tropical Cyclone Giri back in October 2010. It made landfall as a high-end Category 4 equivalent storm with maximum winds of 250 kph (155 mph).
Giri caused over 150 fatalities and roughly 70% of the city of Kyaukphyu was destroyed. According to the United Nations, roughly 15,000 homes were destroyed in Rakhine state during the storm.
About 1 million members of the stateless Rohingya community, who fled persecution in nearby Myanmar during a military crackdown in 2017, are living in the sprawling and overcrowded camps in Cox’s Bazar.
Most live in bamboo and tarpaulin shelters perched on hilly slopes that are vulnerable to strong winds, rain, and landslides.
Jain said the shelters can only withstand wind speeds of 40 kph (24 mph) and he expects winds from Cyclone Mocha to exceed that.
“Low lying areas of the camps are likely to flood rapidly, destroying shelters, facilities such as learning centers, as well as infrastructure such as bridges that have been constructed with bamboo,” he said.
The cyclone adds to an already disastrous year for the Rohingya, and without more funds from the international community, Jain said they won’t have enough to rebuild.
“They faced a 17% cut in their food rations earlier this year due to funding cuts and we expect a further cut in their rations in the coming months. 16,000 refugees lost their home in a devastating fire in March. And now they must deal with the cyclone. Unfortunately, we don’t even have the funds to help refugees rebuild their homes and facilities if the devastation is severe,” he said.
There are also concerns for 30,000 Rohingya refugees housed on an isolated and flood-prone island facility in the Bay of Bengal, called Bhasan Char. The UN refugee agency said volunteers and medical teams are on standby and cyclone shelters and food provisions are available for those living on the island.
In Myanmar, about 6 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance in Rakhine state and across the northwest, with 1.2 million displaced, according to the UN humanitarian agency.
While scientists are still trying to understand ways climate change is affecting cyclones, a slew of research has linked human-caused global warming to more potent and destructive cyclones.
Tropical cyclones (also known as hurricanes, typhoons and tropical storms depending on ocean basin and intensity), feed off ocean heat. They need temperatures of at least around 27 degrees Celsius (80 Fahrenheit Fahrenheit) to form, and the warmer the ocean, the more moisture they can take up.
The waters in the Bay of Bengal are currently around 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit Fahrenheit), about 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than average for May.
As the climate crisis pushes up the temperatures of oceans – which absorb around 90% of the world’s excess heat – it provides ideal conditions for cyclones to gain strength.
Warmer oceans also increase the chances of cyclones rapidly intensifying, according to recent research.
Climate-change fueled sea-level rise adds to the risks, worsening storm surges from tropical cyclones and allowing them to travel further inland.
Bangladesh and Myanmar are particularly threatened because they are low-lying, as well as being home to some of the world’s poorest people.
