![]() ![]() Hide FootnoteAround one million Rohingya, from this and previous exoduses, live in a cluster of densely populated camps in Cox’s Bazar district, as well as some in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. For more background on the situation of the Rohingya, see Crisis Group Asia Reports N°s 296, The Long Haul Ahead for Myanmar’s Rohingya Refugee Crisis, 292, Myanmar’s Rohingya Crisis Enters a Dangerous New Phase, 7 December 2017 283, Myanmar: A New Muslim Insurgency in Rakhine State, 15 December 2016 261, Myanmar: The Politics of Rakhine State, 22 October 2014 and 251, The Dark Side of Transition: Violence Against Muslims in Myanmar, 1 October 2013 and Asia Briefing N☁53, Bangladesh-Myanmar: The Danger of Forced Rohingya Repatriation, 12 November 2018. This briefing is based on an April 2019 visit by Crisis Group to Dhaka and the Cox’s Bazar refugee camps, including interviews with refugee leaders, humanitarian agencies and local analysts. The Myanmar security forces’ mass expulsion of Rohingya starting in August 2017 created a major humanitarian emergency in neighbouring Bangladesh and the largest refugee settlement in the world. This requires instituting a regular and effective Bangladeshi police presence in the camps and investigating crimes and bringing perpetrators to justice.įor their part, donors should help Bangladesh not only to meet the refugees’ immediate humanitarian needs but also to cover the costs of measures that improve their lives and prospects for the future. It should also improve law and order in the camps, where militants and gangs increasingly operate with impunity and are consolidating control to the detriment of non-violent political voices and leaders. The Bangladesh government should lift its ban on the provision of formal education in the camps local and international organisations are ready to provide such education. Shifting focus in this way requires Bangladesh to ease its restrictions on longer-term assistance. It is now time to move beyond the emergency phase of managing this crisis. Systems are now largely in place to provide for their essential humanitarian needs in the sprawling refugee camps. But the unfortunate reality is that Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh will be unable to return home to Myanmar for the foreseeable future. ![]() ![]() Repatriation to Myanmar should remain the long-term goal – not only to relieve the huge burden on Bangladesh but also because that is the strong preference of the refugees themselves. Meltdown strain full version#Ī full version of this article first appeared in World Politics Review.Įighteen months on from the mass expulsion of 740,000 Rohingya from Myanmar to Bangladesh, no sustainable solution for the refugees is in sight. Bangladesh’s prisons are overflowing with political opponents and activists, while extremists, thriving in an atmosphere of impunity, intimidate ordinary citizens. The government, in its attempt to silence political dissent, has politicized and dangerously overstretched the country’s law enforcement institutions. But the violence has worsened as repression peaks. Much of it is the result of the unrelenting, intense rivalry between the country’s two major parties, the governing Awami League of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and its Islamist ally Jamaat-e-Islami. ![]() Unfortunately, political violence is nothing new in Bangladesh. Large-scale political repression has created a climate of injustice that extremist groups have easily exploited in their war against secularists and liberal thinkers. But they are only one element in a years-long cycle of mounting violence. Meltdown strain series#A series of gruesome attacks on bloggers in Bangladesh has shocked the country and the world. ![]()
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