Nimai Hajong remembers almost nothing of the hills of eastern Bangladesh where he was born more than half a century ago, having fled as a small child to India where he has lived as a refugee ever since.

The 58-year-old has been declared a foreigner -- one of four million people effectively stripped of citizenship by the government of the northeastern state of Assam.

Their names have been left off a draft list of citizens published late July that rights groups say threatens to render millions stateless if they cannot prove they are Indian.

The controversial registry includes only those able to show they were in Assam before 1971, when millions fled to the state to escape Bangladesh's war of independence, and their descendants.

However, many whose families arrived before 1971 say authorities have rejected their papers and left them off the list. 

Critics say it is the latest move by the right-wing government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to bolster India's Hindu majority at the expense of minorities. India will hold a national election next year.

Many of those left off the list are Muslims, but those of other minorities and faiths -- including Hindus -- have also missed out.

Assam, where one third of the population is Muslim, has for decades been wracked by tensions over migrants and is the only Indian state to compile such a register.

Just over four million of the total Assam population of more than 30 million people who applied to be on the list were excluded from the draft, according to the registrar general of India.

State officials say no "genuine" Indians need to worry about being left off the list, and there are avenues for appeal.

But for Nimai -- who fled persecution in Bangladesh as a five-year-old on his mother's back -- his world has been upended once more.

- 'Where do we go now?'–

His family are Hajong, a Hindu indigenous people from the Chittagong Hill Tracts bordering India and Myanmar, a region wracked by decades of ethnic conflict.

They were shocked to discover their names left off after submitting the same paperwork to authorities that had allowed them to remain in India for more than 50 years.

"What do we do now? We have accepted this land as our home since 1964, and we have nowhere to go," Hajong told AFP in the small settlement of Bamunigaon, roughly 30 kilometres (19 miles) from Assam's capital Guwahati.

"We have lived here all these years as refugees, but I want to die an Indian."

The list will not be finalised until December, and state and federal governments have sought to allay concerns about the process.

But that has done little to ease the anxiety of those excluded from the draft, who fear a life of limbo -- or even deportation to Bangladesh.

"I was told there was a massacre there, forcing my parents to flee with others from their village," said Gunamoni Dalu, a Hajong woman whose family fled Bangladesh half a century ago to India.

She was born in India in 1968, but was left off the list.

"Since the death of my father, I have lived alone here," she said, fretting about her future.

News of the draft register sparked opposition protests in the national parliament and outrage in Assam, where the state government brought in 25,000 extra security forces in case of trouble.

Assam, known for its lush tea estates and cool hill climate, has witnessed terrible violence between indigenous tribes and settlers.

About 2,000 suspected migrants were butchered in a single day in Nellie in 1983. Nearly all were Muslim, and many were children.

- Local tensions –

Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party won control of Assam in 2016 after promising to expel illegal immigrants and protect the rights of indigenous groups.

Millions fled Bangladesh during its 1971 war of independence from Pakistan, but waves of refugees including the Hajong and the Buddhist Chakma had also escaped persecution to come to India before that. 

Many settled in Assam, which shares a long border with Bangladesh.

Migrants have since been accused of illegally entering the state and taking land and jobs, causing tensions with locals.

Rights groups have compared deletion from the citizenship list to Myanmar's removal of rights and protections for its Rohingya community in 1982.

Robin Koch had hoped the process "would have sealed our Indian identity once and for all".

"Instead, I don't know what went wrong. I can't eat and sleep at night," said the 55-year-old Hajong man, whose family crossed the border in 1964.

"After our parents escaped... we lost all links with our clan. We have no one there now."

AFP

An emergency meeting to head off an outbreak of African swine fever across Asia opened in Bangkok on Wednesday, after a mass pig cull in China sparked fears of a potential pandemic.

The three-day meeting led by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) brings together specialists in animal diseases as well as agricultural policy from nine countries neighbouring China.

China, the world's largest pork producer and consumer, reported its first case in August in northeastern Liaoning province. The disease has since spread south prompting a cull of 38,000 pigs.

African swine fever does not affect humans but causes haemorrhagic fever in pigs and wild boars that is nearly always fatal.

There is no antidote or vaccine, and the only known preventive measure is a mass cull of infected livestock.

"It's critical that this region be ready for the very real possibility that ASF could jump the border into other countries," the FAO's Wantanee Kalpravidh said in a statement.

"That's why this emergency meeting has been convened -- to assess where we are now and to determine how we can work together in a co-ordinated, regional response."

Swine fever spreads by contact between infected pigs, ticks or other wild animals and can inflict massive economic damage on farms. 

Participants at the Bangkok meeting come from Cambodia, China, Japan, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam.

Hours after the meeting was convened, China's agricultural ministry announced its latest case of African swine fever, with 12 more pigs dead in northeastern Heilongjiang province, and another 39 infected.

The disease has spread through pig herds in several Chinese provinces, prompting authorities to take emergency steps like shutting live hog markets in affected areas and banning pig transport from affected provinces.

But fears persist that the rapidly spreading disease could dent production in the world's largest hog market.

© AFP

Super Typhoon Mangkhut slammed into the northern Philippines on Saturday with violent winds and torrential rains, as authorities warned millions in its path of potentially heavy destruction.

The massive storm, which forecasters have called the strongest typhoon this year, blew down trees, tore off roofs and knocked out power when it made landfall on the island of Luzon in the pre-dawn darkness.

As it barrelled west toward China across the disaster-prone archipelago, the storm's gusts strengthened up to 330 kilometres (205 miles) per hour but its sustained winds had weakened to 185 km per hour.

"As much as possible, stay indoors," Chris Perez, a forecaster for the state weather service, warned the roughly four million people in the path of the storm after it landed at 1:40 am (1740 Friday GMT).

An average of 20 typhoons and storms lash the Philippines each year, killing hundreds of people and leaving millions in near-perpetual poverty.

Thousands of people fled their homes in high-risk areas ahead of the storm's arrival because of major flooding and landslide risks.

Authorities hiked the storm alert on Friday to its second-highest level in northern Luzon provinces and mobilised rescue teams.

The elevated warning level carried risks of "very heavy" damage to communities hit by the typhoon and a storm surge that was forecast to hit six meters in some areas, the weather service said.

'We are terrified' 

Residents had started lashing down their roofs and gathering supplies days before the arrival of the storm.

"Among all the typhoons this year, this one (Mangkhut) is the strongest," Japan Meteorological Agency forecaster Hiroshi Ishihara told AFP on Friday.

"This is a violent typhoon. It has the strongest sustained wind (among the typhoons of this year)."

After blasting the Philippines, Mangkhut is predicted to hurtle towards China's heavily populated southern coast this weekend.

"They (authorities) said this typhoon is twice as strong as the last typhoon, that's why we are terrified," Myrna Parallag, 53, told AFP after fleeing her home in the northern Philippines.

"We learned our lesson last time. The water reached our roof," she said, referring to when her family rode out a typhoon at home in 2016.

The country's deadliest on record is Super Typhoon Haiyan, which left more than 7,350 people dead or missing across the central Philippines in November 2013.

Poor communities reliant on fishing are some of the most vulnerable to fierce typhoon winds and the storm surges that pound the coast.

"The rains will be strong and the winds are no joke... We may have a storm surge that could reach four storeys high," Michael Conag, a spokesman for local civil defence authorities, told AFP.

The storm is not forecast to directly hit Hong Kong, but forecasters say the city will be lashed by Mangkhut's wind and rain.

The Hong Kong Observatory warned that the massive typhoon will pose a "severe threat" to China's southern coast before moving on to northern Vietnam.

AFP

A two-year-old girl has died and seven others remain missing after a mudslide at a refugee camp in northern Thailand near the Myanmar border, police said Monday.

The camp in Mae Hong Son province is home to around 10,000 people from Myanmar's ethnic Karen group, forced to flee a conflict that has festered for decades between rebels and the military.

Heavy monsoon rains in the mountains surrounding Mae La Oon camp caused the disaster late on Sunday, Thai Police Colonel Kantapat Netipitchayapong said.

"The authorities are still looking for the seven missing," he told AFP, adding that the mudslide wiped out 12 houses.

"There are 11 people with minor injuries and a two-year-old girl died," he said.

Mae La Oon is just three kilometres from the Thai-Myanmar border, one of the most remote of the numerous refugee camps lining the jungle-covered frontier.

Many families have lived in the border camps for decades, victims of a civil war that has rumbled on since Myanmar gained independence from colonial power Britain.

The Karen National Union has officially signed a peace deal with Myanmar's government but its armed wing is still locked in what is one of the world's longest-running civil wars.

But the insurgency has often been forgotten by the outside world and has in recent years been eclipsed by the Rohingya crisis on the other side of the country.

Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi, has made it a priority to bring peace to the country's restive border areas and has pressed rebel groups to join a faltering ceasefire accord.

Two more groups signed up earlier this year but fighting continues in many areas where the ceasefire is supposed to be in effect, while other rebel groups refuse to participate.

Thailand is expected to face three more days of heavy rain as the tail of deadly Typhoon Mangkhut whips the country, after killing scores in the Philippines and causing widespread havoc in Hong Kong and China.

© AFP

Bangladesh will next month start moving 100,000 Rohingya refugees to a remote island, officials said Tuesday, despite warnings the silty strip is prone to violent weather.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is scheduled on October 3 to officially open newly-constructed shelters for the displaced Muslims on Bhashan Char, a muddy islet that only emerged from the Bay of Bengal in 2006.

The controversial plan is already behind schedule. Officials previously said they wanted to start moving refugees from overcrowded camps near the border with Myanmar to the island in June, before the monsoon began.

The navy has fast-tracked construction of shelters and evacuation centres for 100,000 refugees and nearly three-quarters of the project is complete, a senior disaster management official told AFP.

"Initially, 50 to 60 Rohingya families will be relocated in the first phase beginning next month," said the official, Habibul Kabir Chowdhury.

Bangladesh, a low-lying riverine country vulnerable to rising sea levels, is prone to tropical cyclones, especially in the Bay of Bengal between April and November.

Hundreds of thousands have died from natural disasters in the last 50 years, mostly in coastal areas near Bhashan Char.

The island is one hour by boat from the nearest land but violent storms make the journey by sea dangerous or sometimes impossible.

The plan to relocate refugees there was revived after 700,000 Rohingya Muslims, fleeing a violent crackdown in Myanmar in August last year, poured into southeast Bangladesh and overwhelmed existing refugee camps.

Rights groups have warned the silty strip is uninhabitable and prone to flooding and other natural disasters, and urged Bangladesh to drop the idea.

But the government pumped $280 million last November into transforming it into a habitable site.

A navy official told AFP a three-metre-high (nine feet) embankment had been erected around the entire island to make it flood-resistant.

"We're ready to receive refugees," he said, asking for anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to the press.

Secretary of the disaster ministry, Shah Kamal, said the refugees would be able to access humanitarian relief on the island and receive training in skills such as fishing.

Officials say refugees will not be forced to leave existing camps in Cox's Bazar district, among the most crowded places on earth and prone to landslides, disease and other dangers.

"If we can ensure full humanitarian assistance to them, I don't see any reason why they won't come to the island. We'll convince them," said Chowdhury, the disaster official.     

© AFP

Thai authorities have suspended the construction of a road near a "No Man's Land" islet in a river between Thailand and Myanmar at the request of their neighbours, said a Thai army source on Saturday. 

Myanmar troops in Myawaddy township alleged that the road was being built in "questionable proximity" to the islet, locally called "No Man's Land", on the Moei River, which divides the two neighbouring countries, the army source said. 

They called on a task force of Thailand's 14th Infantry Regiment in Mae Sot district of Tak province, about 478 kilometers northwest of Bangkok, to halt the construction of the road and open talks about it, he said. 

The two-kilometre-long road is designed to pass Rim Moei village in Mae Sot district, across the river from Myawaddy township in Myanmar's Kayin state. 

The Thai army task force has done as requested by the Myanmar troops and managed to have officials of the Department of Public Works and Town and Country Planning temporarily suspend the construction of the road on the Thai side of the border, the army source said. 

The talk, proposed by the Myanmar side, is yet to be scheduled, he said.

Bangladesh has postponed plans to begin relocating Rohingya Muslims to a remote island, officials said Monday, amid staunch opposition to the controversial idea among refugees living near the Myanmar border.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was slated to open the new settlement built to house 100,000 refugees on Bhashan Char on October 3, despite warnings the silty strip was prone to violent weather.

But a spokesman for Bangladesh's armed forces, which has overseen the $280 million-effort to transform the muddy islet into a habitable camp, said the opening ceremony had been delayed.

"We will announce a new date soon," Lieutenant Colonel Alamgir Kabir told AFP, without providing further details.

The controversial plan, first floated in 2015, was already well behind schedule.

Officials previously said they wanted to start moving refugees from overcrowded camps near the border with Myanmar to the island in June, before the monsoon season began.

A senior disaster management official told AFP in September that nearly three quarters of the project was complete, with the navy fast-tracking construction of shelters and evacuation centres.

No reason was provided for the latest delay.

But the proposal to uproot the refugees to a remote island that only rose from the sea in 2006 remains unpopular in the teeming Rohingya camps.

The island is one hour by boat from the nearest land but violent storms make the journey by sea dangerous or sometimes impossible.

"It is cut off from the mainland. What if someone needs emergency medical attention?" said Rohingya community leader Abdul Gowffer.

The UN has insisted that any relocation to Bhashan Char be voluntary.

Local authorities have been seeking to reassure refugees that they will be safe on the island.

"We are still working on it. We're talking to the families," Bangladesh's Refugee Commissioner Mohammad Abul Kalam told AFP.

One million displaced Muslims live cheek by jowl on hillside shanties near the Myanmar border, in conditions aid groups warn put them at risk from floods, landslides and disease.

There was a further push to get the plan off the ground after 700,000 Rohingya, fleeing a violent crackdown in Myanmar in August last year, poured into southeast Bangladesh.

But rights groups have warned it is too risky to house refugees on the island. Hundreds of thousands have died in Bangladesh from natural disasters in the last 50 years, mostly in coastal areas near Bhashan Char.

Local officials have pointed to a newly-constructed three-metre (nine-feet) high embankment around the island they say will keep out tidal surges in the event of a cyclone.

But refugees remain wary.

"Any strong blow from a cyclone and, God forbid, the shelters would be wiped out," said a community leader, Mohammad Shoyeb.

© AFP

Indian police said Wednesday that seven Rohingya detained in the country's northeast will be deported to Myanmar.

The United Nations had warned India that returning the men ignored the persecution they faced in Myanmar, and would be a "flagrant denial" of their right to protection.

But police in the northeast Indian state of Manipur, where the men have been incarcerated since 2012 for immigration violations, said the Rohingya would be deported Thursday.

"The seven Myanmarese men will be deported tomorrow," Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta, a senior state police officer, told AFP.

The UN Special Rapporteur on racism, Tendayi Achiume, said she was "appalled" at the amount of time the men from Rakhine state in Myanmar's west had been detained.

Rakhine was the epicentre of a Myanmar army offensive that over the past year has driven 700,000 Rohingya Muslims into Bangladesh.

Myanmar's army has denied nearly all wrongdoing, insisting its campaign was justified to root out Rohingya terrorists.

Nearly 200 Rohingya are known to be detained in India on charges of illegal entry, Achiume said.

The deportations follow an Indian government order last year to return the Rohingya. The Supreme Court is still considering a petition challenging the order on the grounds it was unconstitutional.

Achiume said India risked breaching its international legal obligations by returning the men to possible harm.

"Given the ethnic identity of the men, this is a flagrant denial of their right to protection and could amount to refoulement," the law professor said in a statement.

New Delhi has described the Rohingya as a security threat, pointing to intelligence it says links the minority group to extremist organisations. 

The UN says there are 16,000 registered Rohingya in India, but many more are undocumented. New Delhi puts the figure at 40,000.

© AFP

India on Thursday went ahead with deporting seven Rohingya men to Myanmar, despite UN warnings that they faced persecution in the country.

The men, who had been in detention for immigration offences since 2012, were handed over to Myanmar authorities at a border crossing in India's northeast state of Manipur.

"Seven Myanmarese nationals have been deported today. They were handed over to the authorities of Myanmar at Moreh border post," said senior Assam police officer Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta.

Photos showed the seven men seated in a bus bound for the border in the remote hilly state bordering Myanmar's far northwest.

The UN had voiced concern that returning the men ignored the danger they faced in Myanmar, where for decades the Rohingya have been targeted in violent pogroms by security forces.

A UN special rapporteur had warned India risked breaking international laws on refoulement -- the return of refugees or asylum seekers to a country where they could be harmed.

Legal efforts to stymie their deportation failed when India's Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a petition on their behalf and upheld their status as illegal immigrants.

"Even the country of their origin has accepted them as its citizens," a three-judge bench said.

India's decision "to deport seven Rohingya refugees back to Myanmar is cruel and could put lives at risk of persecution including torture and potential death," said John Quinley III, a human rights specialist with Fortify Rights, a non-profit organisation.

New Delhi considers the Rohingya a security threat, pointing to intelligence which it says links the minority group to terrorist organisations.

The government had ordered last year that all Rohingya inside India -- New Delhi puts the figure at 40,000 -- be deported.

The Supreme Court is considering a petition challenging the order as unconstitutional.

The UN says there are 16,000 registered Rohingya in India.

© AFP

About 70 ethnic Rakhines protested outside the Myanmar embassy in Tokyo on Monday, calling on State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi to release a Rakhine nationalist leader and a social activist arrested earlier this year and charged with treason, RFA reported.

The country’s de facto leader has been in Japan since Oct. 5 to attend a Mekong-Japan Summit on Tuesday and to drum up Japanese investment for Myanmar at a time when much of the international community has heavily condemned her and the National League for Democracy (NLD) government over the handling of the Rohingya crisis in Rakhine state.

The demonstration, organized by the Arakan Youth Union (AYU-Japan), demanded that the Myanmar government immediately release Rakhine politician Aye Maung and author and activist Wai Han Aung, who were arrested in January and charged under the High Treason Law and the Unlawful Association Act.

Myanmar will host the 53rd meeting of ASEAN Committee on Culture and Information (ASEAN-COCI) in Nay Pyi Taw on Nov.12-16 under the framework of ASEAN Charter, Xinhua reported quoting local media.

The meeting will be beneficial in implementing cooperation and communication projects to increase awareness of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), establishing positive views on ASEAN and increasing the holding of culture and art shows.

ASEAN-COCI meeting is alternately hosted by ASEAN member countries with Myanmar taking up the host for 35th event in Yangon in 2000 and 43rd in Nay Pyi Taw in 2008.

A Rohingya family of five has returned to Myanmar from Bangladesh, sources said Thursday, a rare development while a large-scale repatriation deal remains stalled.

More than 720,000 of Myanmar's stateless Muslim minority fled a military crackdown in August last year, taking shelter in crowded camps in Bangladesh.

There they recounted tales of rape, murder and arson as villages in Rakhine state were burned to the ground.

United Nations investigators have said senior Myanmar military officials should be prosecuted for genocide, but the country has rejected these calls, insisting it was defending itself against terrorists.

Myanmar and Bangladesh signed a deal to bring back the Rohingya but many fear to return without guaranteed rights such as citizenship, access to health care and freedom of movement.

Authorities in Myanmar say more than 100 displaced Rohingya have returned in recent months though rights groups have questioned whether the returnees did so voluntarily.

The family of five "displaced people" came back to Rakhine state on Wednesday morning, state mouthpiece Global New Light of Myanmar reported Thursday.

Myanmar's government has trumpeted each return but Bangladesh insists that the official process has not commenced.

The Bangladesh government's Rohingya camp commissioner Mohammad Abul Kalam said he had only heard about the family leaving but has not received official confirmation of their return to Myanmar.

"Anyone can go back if he/she wants," he said.

"But formal repatriation has not begun."

Abdur Rahim, a Rohingya camp leader in Bangladesh, said the family had been staying in the Balukhali camp in Cox Bazar district.

"They returned to their home...near Maungdaw township in Rakhine yesterday," he said.

UN agencies, which signed a deal with the Myanmar government to assess conditions on the ground in northern Rakhine, said they had carried out an initial survey in September of about two dozen villages.

"Mistrust, fear of neighbouring communities and a sense of insecurity are prevalent in many areas," they said in a statement.

© AFP

China and Southeast Asian states will hold their first joint maritime exercises next week, officials said Friday, in a move aimed at easing tensions but which may spark US alarm.

Beijing's expansive claims to the South China Sea have long been a source of friction with rival claimants in Southeast Asia, as well as Washington which has traditionally been the dominant naval power in the area.

Despite disagreements over Beijing's territorial ambitions, China and Southeast Asia are trying to strike a more conciliatory tone in an effort to stop tensions from spiralling dangerously out of control.

As part of this, the navies of China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are set to hold their first joint drills, which will take place in the South China Sea.

"As we speak, the navies of ASEAN are en route to Zhanjiang in China for the ASEAN-China Maritime Exercise," Singapore Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen said.

Making the announcement at a gathering of ASEAN defence ministers in Singapore, also attended by US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis and his Chinese counterpart, Ng said the drills would help to "build trust, confidence".

The city of Zhanjiang in southern China is home to the South Sea Fleet of the People's Liberation Army.

Tabletop exercises between ASEAN and China were held in Singapore in August to prepare for next week's drills.

However, some observers see the exercise as part of efforts by China to diminish American influence in the region by forging closer ties with Washington's traditional allies and partners.  

In an apparent effort to lessen any such fears, Ng said ASEAN was planning to hold maritime exercises with the US for the first time next year.

Mattis insisted that he did not believe the China-ASEAN drills would reduce US sway in the strategically vital region.

"We do not see this as contrary to our interests," he said. 

"If we can have that sort of activity going on, it's transparent, something that's been lacking in the South China Sea. Then that's going to be working in the right direction."

- 'US not losing ground' -

Hoang Thi Ha, a political analyst with the ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said next week's exercises were aimed at "demonstrating that China and ASEAN are managing well their maritime problems".

But she added its significance should not be overstated as it was a one-off drill in waters that were not disputed. 

"The US is not losing ground exactly because ASEAN chooses to be open and inclusive," she told AFP.

The Southeast Asian defence ministers also agreed on guidelines to prevent unplanned encounters between their military aircraft, and will propose them to other countries, including the US and China, at a meeting on Saturday, Ng said.

They are aimed at reducing the likelihood that a chance encounter could spiral into conflict in the case of a miscalculation.

Four ASEAN members -- Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam -- have conflicting claims in the South China Sea with Beijing. China claims sovereignty over almost the entire area, including waters near the shores of smaller countries.

Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Singapore and Thailand are ASEAN's other members.

Concerns have escalated dramatically in recent years as China started building artificial islands on reefs in disputed waters, and it has also constructed military facilities and airstrips.

Washington has expressed alarm over the island-building, saying it could affect freedom of navigation in the sea, which hosts some of the world's most vital commercial shipping lanes.

At Friday's meeting, Mattis stressed that "no single nation can rewrite the international rules of the road, and we expect all nations -- large and small -- to respect those rules".

The Pentagon chief met Thursday with his Chinese counterpart, General Wei Fenghe, on the sidelines of the gathering as they sought to normalise military relations that have dramatically soured over trade and sanctions tensions.

AFP

Hindu refugees from Myanmar living in a camp in Bangladesh have been celebrating the festival of Durga Puja for the first time since fleeing violence in northern Rakhine state last year.

More than 500 Hindus escaped their homes last August along with over 700,000 Rohingya Muslims as Myanmar's army launched a crackdown on terrorists.

Hindu community leader Jibon Sharma told AFP that the terrifying circumstances of their escape prevented them from celebrating the annual festival last year.

But now local authorities in southeastern Bangladesh and the country's Hindu minority have helped them, including with materials to build the pavilions housing displays of the many-armed goddess Durga.

"When we were in Myanmar we used to worship regularly. But it's different here. Bangladeshis helped us beyond imagination with money and clothes," Sharma told AFP.

"We are very grateful to them."

The Hindu refugees say that their community was attacked in August 2017 in northern Rakhine state by Rohingya terrorists, and relations with the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh remain tense.

The Hindus are camping only a kilometre or two (a mile) around away from the world's largest refugee camp -- Kutupalong near Cox's Bazar -- where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims have been living.

"We have full-time security posted at this camp. We are well aware of the tension between them," said police official Jahangir Alam.

The festival includes 10 days of music and cultural performances, as well as clothes being gifted to cheering children.

"I forgot when was the last time we had such a great Puja (prayer ritual). I am seeing my kids' happy faces... I am very happy," Suma Paul, a Hindu refugee, said as she cried happy tears.

© AFP

India and Myanmar have agreed to fight insurgent groups operating along the border between the two countries and prevent the smuggling of wildlife and narcotics, according to an article in the Morung Express.

It was agreed upon at the 22nd homeland security meeting between India and Myanmar held last week. During the meeting, both the sides agreed to take action against insurgent groups operating within their territories, an Indian Home Ministry statement said.

The two countries agreed on providing security cooperation and facilitate movement of people and trade across the International Border. It was also agreed to strengthen cooperation on international border management, including construction of subsidiary pillars to better demarcate the border.