Criminals using walkie talkies in Rohingya camps

Criminals are using walkie talkies for fixed-distance communication while committing crimes in the Rohingya camps, according to a camp source. 

This is making them hard to trace, despite the camp's networks being tracked by the police after the recent attacks. 

Several Rohingya leaders, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the criminals are also using SIM cards from Myanmar to communicate using Myanmar's network. 

Hamid Ullah, a Rohingya leader, said, many areas in the camp do not have proper cellular network signals and that is where the walkie talkies come in handy. If the usage of such walkie talkies can be controlled, the criminal activities in the camps will go down, he claimed. 

This correspondent recently obtained some pictures of Rohingyas miscreants holding weapons. Looking closely at the pictures reveals that each of the miscreants was also carrying walkie talkies. 

Earlier on 4 July, a Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) team arrested two Rohingya youths for carrying eight illegal walkie-talkies in Cox's Bazar. They confessed the walkie talkies were being taken to the camps to use in criminal activities. 

In the later months, more illegal walkie talkies were confiscated during various raids in the Rohingya camps. Police said they were working to determine where the walkie talkies are being supplied from. In the wake of the recent criminal attacks in the camps, the issue of walkie talkies has resurfaced again. 

Md Naimul Haque, commander of APBN – 14, confirmed that the criminals do rely on alternate networks to stay under the radar. He said this makes getting information about future attacks more challenging for the law enforcers. 

Shah Rezwan Hayat, refugee relief and repatriation commissioner, Cox's Bazar, said he has received information that miscreants in the Rohingya camps were also using Myanmar Posts and Telecommunications (MPT) sim cards. 

He said the coordination among all working law enforcement agencies have been improved in the camps and surveillance has been increased. 

In the last 49 months, at least 234 people were killed in the Rohingya camps, according to the district police. Some 1,301 cases were registered against around 2,945 Rohingyas. 

The camp sources said at least 14 criminal groups are currently active in the camps. These groups are involved in various crimes including human and drug trafficking, robbery, kidnapping, theft etc.