Rohingya people living in refugee camps in the Bangladeshi city of Cox's Bazar are being arbitrarily detained, beaten, and tortured by members of the Armed Police Battalion (APBn)—a specialized combat unit of the Bangladesh police force—an investigation by the human rights NGO Fortify Rights has revealed.
"Bangladesh police beat Rohingya refugees from Myanmar with batons and choked and used other torture methods against them to extort payments, sometimes amounting to the equivalent of thousands of US dollars," the group said last week.
The APBn has been responsible for maintaining security in the refugee camps since July 2020. The force has since faced repeated accusations of human rights abuses against the Rohingya.
Matthew Smith—chief executive officer of Fortify Rights—said police are "using Rohingya refugees like human ATMs by inflicting severe physical and mental pain to demand corrupt payments."
Bangladesh is currently home to around a million Rohingya, a mostly Muslim minority from Rakhine state in neighboring Myanmar.
In 2017, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled Myanmar after the military there launched a clampdown on the community. It led to one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
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