Bangladesh shuts largest school in Rohingya [Photo: Eastern Eye]
Bangladesh has shut the largest private school for Rohingya refugees.
This follows a further blow to the educational prospects of thousands of children stuck in vast camps in the country’s southeast.
Bangladesh has been sheltering about 850,000 Rohingya refugees from neighbouring Myanmar, since a military offensive in 2017 that the United States this month designated as genocide.
Since December, Bangladeshi authorities have been shutting down schools set up by the Rohingya, and late last week it closed Kayaphuri School.
The school was set up by Mohib Ullah, a prominent Rohingya community leader who was gunned down in September, allegedly by a Rohingya militant group that is accused of murdering opponents in the camps.
The private school, funded by teachers and better-off refugee families, taught around 600 older pupils the same curriculum as is taught in Myanmar, with the hopes that the students will one day return home.
UNICEF runs schools in the camps but they offer education to children aged four to 14, leaving older pupils to go to private schools or Islamic seminaries — called madrassas — in the settlements.