My new Dhaka Tribune article makes one thing clear - this sinking was not a failure at sea. It was a failure on land. Bangladesh’s policy framework has constructed a system of containment rather than protection, where nearly 1.2 million Rohingya are confined to camps with restricted movement, no formal right to work, and shrinking aid. Within that system, leaving is not an aberration. It is a predictable outcome. When you remove lawful mobility, economic agency, and physical security, movement does not disappear. It becomes irregular, dangerous, and criminalised.

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The role of UNHCR in this ecosystem is no less troubling. Protection, in principle, is its core mandate. Yet here is a case where a refugee documented threats, named perpetrators, and formally requested intervention and still found no effective protection. The response, instead, reverts to familiar language about “protracted displacement” and “durable solutions.” That language may be institutionally convenient, but it obscures the immediate question - what does protection mean if it cannot function at the point where a refugee says, clearly, “I am not safe”?

Then there is the politics of diaspora commentary. Ro Nay San Lwin urges Rohingya not to take dangerous journeys and to struggle for “dignified return.” Additionally, he says not to trust traffickers. This is presented as advice. It is, in fact, a non-insight. Of course, traffickers cannot be trusted. That is precisely why their continued relevance demands explanation.

People do not board these boats because they believe traffickers are benevolent. They board them because the alternatives have been foreclosed. When movement is restricted, work is prohibited, aid is shrinking, and protection cannot be relied upon, the choice is not between safety and risk. It is between different forms of risk. In that context, warning people about traffickers does not address the problem. It avoids it.

No credible conditions for return exist. Rakhine remains unstable, fragmented, and unsafe. To tell people not to leave without confronting these realities is not leadership. It is distance speaking to confinement. It is not guidance. It is the repetition of the obvious while ignoring the conditions that make the obvious irrelevant.

So the script repeats. Blame the traffickers. Arrest a few intermediaries. Call it justice. Meanwhile, the underlying system remains intact - containment without rights, protection without enforcement, and advice without consequence. As long as that structure persists, boats will continue to leave. And each time they sink, the explanations will be ready but the causes will remain untouched.

Read the full story here.

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They are accused of spreading “fake information against the office of Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner (RRRC).” The error regarding a general order to close Rohingya shops is obvious. The consequence is extraordinary. There is no indication of malicious intent by the youths. No instruction was given to them to correct the information. No warning. No engagement. Instead, the youths were arrested, charged, and sentenced.

In a functioning civil society, a factual error in a social media post is met with a correction or a "cease and desist." Moving straight to a one-month detention suggests the goal isn't to correct the record, but to deter reporting of any kind.

From Screenshot to Arrest

What happened next is more revealing than the arrest itself. According to information obtained from within the camps, the post did not simply circulate organically. A screenshot of it was reportedly forwarded to RRRC HQ by Khin Maung, one of the five rotating presidents of the United Council of Rohingya (UCR).

From there, the image was distributed through camp coordination networks. Rohingya members within those structures saw it. The discussion spread. Shortly afterwards, arrests followed.

The sequence matters. A piece of information moves through a structure, namely UCR, that is presented as community representation, enters administrative channels, and re-emerges as a criminal case!

I asked Khin Maung directly about his role in the arrests. He has not responded - a familiar silence for an individual who habitually avoids uncomfortable questions. The involvement of co-opted figures like Khin Maung in transmitting information to the RRRC blurs the line between community representation and administrative enforcement. Khin Maung has reportedly claimed he only shared the post for "confirmation," a convenient defence that masks his role as a catalyst for the arrests.

The involvement of a UCR official is not surprising. It is consistent with how the organisation has operated since its formation. The UCR was assembled through a tightly controlled process. A small voter base selected a larger congress, which in turn produced an executive committee and five rotating presidents. At every stage, the RRRC shaped participation, approved outcomes, and intervened in membership.

What Was Being Shared

The post that triggered the arrests referred to a real event. On Bhasan Char, an entire market had been shut down after electrical wires and a motor were stolen from a facility used by officials. There was no initial investigation and there was no attempt to isolate responsibility.

Instead, all Rohingya-run shops were ordered closed. Any violation would result in demolition and legal action.

Within 24 hours, the stolen items were reportedly recovered. Four individuals were arrested - two Rohingya and two Bangladeshi nationals. But the response had already done its work. Livelihoods were halted. A message had been sent. This was not policing by any stretch of the imagination. It was collective punishment.

The images shared by the two youths in Cox’s Bazar were taken from this incident. They did not invent the event. They misunderstood its location (where the order to shut shops applied). For that, they were jailed.

After the Closure

The story does not end with the reopening of the shops. In the days that followed, a new structure emerged on Bhasan Char. A 21-member “representative committee,” reportedly formed under RRRC direction. Its stated purpose was to prevent theft, eliminate drug trafficking, stop syndicates, and maintain social order.

But according to multiple accounts from residents, the composition of the committee raised immediate concerns. Teachers and educated individuals were largely excluded. Apart from a small number of “Rohingya market” figures, most members were drawn from a single “organised group” that had long sought to consolidate influence within the camps.

Some individuals reportedly have histories linked to the very activities the committee claims to address. The committee has not remained symbolic. Its members are conducting patrols, accompanied by additional individuals acting as enforcers. They move in a coordinated fashion. Residents report intimidation, surveillance, and fear.

There are concerns that the structure may be used to settle personal disputes, target individuals, and consolidate power through coercion. Even more striking is the ambiguity around its authority. Residents report that the committee may not have been formally approved by the CiC, or at least not in its current composition. It appears to have emerged in the space between official instruction and informal enforcement.

This is where governance becomes most opaque.

A System, Not an Incident

Taken together, these events form a pattern. A collective punishment is imposed without due process. Images of that punishment circulate. Those who share them are identified and arrested. Posts of my original article in Bhasan Char WhatsApp groups are removed.

The suppression of information is coordinated across both digital and physical spaces. This pattern is not isolated. In June 2024, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that Rohingya refugees detained in Cox’s Bazar were questioned about their links to my work, with some shown my photograph by security officials. The concern is not personal. It is structural. Information, and those associated with it, are being tracked.

Two other things to note:

A leadership structure presented as representative of Rohingya appears to facilitate the flow of information upwards …to RRRC HQ.

A new enforcement body emerges on the ground in Bhasan Char, operating with unclear authority and generating fear.

At each stage, the same logic applies - control without accountability.

The Rohingya are excluded from formal legal systems. There are no independent courts. No effective complaint mechanisms exist. Authority is concentrated in administrative offices, exercised through intermediaries, and enforced through both formal and informal means. When there are no independent courts or complaint mechanisms, "law" is whatever the person in power says it is at that moment.

In such a system, punishment does not need to be proportionate. Nor does it need to be evidence-based. Anything or anybody that escapes control is liable to be punished.

The Question That Remains

The question is no longer whether a mistake was made. The question is what kind of system responds to a mistake in this way and who, within that system, is empowered to turn information into a crime.

The two youths in Cox’s Bazar were not organising protests. They were not inciting violence or fabricating events. They shared images of something that had happened. I repeat again, they got the location wrong. For that, they were arrested, charged, and jailed.

When the cost of a mistake is jail time, the community stops sharing information altogether. This creates an information vacuum that authorities can fill with their own state-sanctioned narratives.

The role of the United Council of Rohingya (UCR) in this sequence is particularly concerning. If a "representative" (Khin Maung) is the one funnelling social media screenshots to the RRRC HQ, the organisation is not acting as a bridge for community needs, but as a vertical extension of the authoritarian RRRC. This turns community “representatives” into informants. It breaks the social fabric of the camps, as residents can no longer trust their own “elected” or appointed representatives.

In sum, this isn't just about two youths and a Facebook post. It is a description of an authoritarian ecosystem where information is treated as a weapon, and the marginalised are denied the basic human right to be wrong without being imprisoned. From Bhasan Char to Cox’s Bazar, a mobile court sentence for a social media post reveals the brutal reality of the CiC’s unchecked "Legal Apartheid."

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Dil Mohammed, a Rohingya community leader, was seized in Bangladesh in January 2023. For four months, he was held in secret, without access to family or lawyers. In August 2025 (and published November 2025), the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that this amounted to an enforced disappearance involving Bangladeshi security agencies, including RAB and DGFI.

In August 2024, Bangladesh establishes a commission to investigate enforced disappearances with a mandate covering “all cases” carried out by state agencies since 2010. On paper, the case fits squarely within that remit.

And yet, when the commission’s findings emerge, there is no trace of it.

His son says he raised the case directly with a commissioner, only to be told not to pursue the matter, and later met with silence even after the UN decision was formally shared.

At the same time, other Rohingya detainees linked to the “No Man’s Land” incident describe months of secret detention and torture in facilities known as “Ayna Ghor,” suggesting this may not have been an isolated case.

In my latest piece for Dhaka Tribune, I examine how the case of Dil Mohammed appears to have been omitted despite the UN ruling being communicated to the authorities and what this reveals about the limits of accountability when the victims are Rohingya.

Read the full article:

Dhaka Tribune

See also:

Further Reading:

1. UN Declares Detention of Rohingya Leader Aribitrary

2. Landmark UN ruling demands Bangladesh free detained Rohingya leader Dil Mohammed.

3. International Spotlight on Bangladesh as Rohingya Leader’s Case Heads to the UN

4. The Disappearance and Arbitrary Detention of Rohingya Refugee Leader Dil Mohammed

5. The Disappearance of Dil Mohammed: A Voice for the Rohingya Silenced

6. Myanmar Bangladesh joint offensive cracks down on Rohingya

An audio message circulated by CMO (care maintenance officer) Faisal, a junior camp-level official, relayed what was described as an “urgent order” from the CiC office.

All Rohingya shops and businesses in Cluster 05, including Market No. 19 and smaller shops across nearby clusters, were to be shut down indefinitely.

The reason: a theft.

Electrical wires and a motor had been stolen from a shelter used by CiC office staff. Until the items were recovered, all Rohingya-run businesses were to remain closed. Any shop that opened in violation of the order would be demolished immediately, with further legal action to follow.

There was no investigation at this stage. No named suspects. No attempt to distinguish between individuals and the wider community.

Instead, an entire population was punished. This cannot be described as policing. It is collective punishment.

Within 24 hours, the stolen items were reportedly recovered. Four individuals were apprehended: two Rohingya and two Bangladeshi nationals.

But even here, the asymmetry of power was visible. Images of the two Rohingya suspects were circulated in internal WhatsApp groups of “Head focals.” The Bangladeshi suspects were not. The Bangladeshis will likely enter the formal criminal justice system (police, courts, lawyers), while the Rohingya are trapped in the "system of exception" (CiC's whim, mobile courts, or arbitrary beating).

The initial order, however, had already done its work. Shops had been shuttered. Livelihoods were halted and a message sent.

The audio message relaying the order was circulated by CMO Faisal, a camp-level official, as I wrote above. This detail matters. By using a junior official to transmit “urgent orders,” the CiC’s office maintains a layer of distance, while enforcement is carried out through intermediaries. Responsibility becomes diffuse, but authority remains intact. I have previously reported on Faisal’s role in camp governance, including allegations from residents that he has been influential in shaping harsh enforcement practices on the island.

The logic is clear. When authority is concentrated in a single administrative office, and when those subject to that authority have no access to courts or independent complaint mechanisms, punishment becomes discretionary. It does not need to be proportionate or individualised. It does not even need to follow evidence! It only needs to be enforced.

For Rohingya on Bhasan Char, this is not an isolated incident but part of a wider pattern. During relocation from Cox’s Bazar, refugees were promised the ability to run businesses, raise livestock, and live with a degree of economic autonomy. These assurances were central to persuading many to move.

The reality has diverged sharply.

In a message circulated after the incident, one Rohingya resident described the decision as “unjust and unfair,” noting that the authorities had imposed collective punishment despite the fact that such thefts are rarely confined to Rohingya alone and often involve actors beyond the camps. The response, however, treated the entire Rohingya community as responsible.

There is a deeper issue here. The theft itself reportedly took place within a facility used by officials. That raises obvious questions about security and oversight. Yet the response was not to examine institutional failure (namely, Bangladeshi guards) but to impose sanctions on the refugee population.

This inversion, where those with the least power bear the greatest consequences, is not incidental. It is clear that it is built into the governance structure of Bhasan Char.

The CiC office exercises sweeping authority over movement, markets, dispute resolution, policing and discipline. There are no meaningful checks on this power from courts or independent bodies. In such a system, collective punishment is not an aberration. It is a tool. See this article of mine published recently in Dhaka Tribune.

The language of “management” and “security” is often used to describe how the island is run. But incidents like this reveal something else - a system in which an entire community can be penalised for the alleged actions of a few, without due process and without recourse. When a market is closed because of stolen wire, the island isn’t a “housing project”; it’s a high-security prison.

Finally, the silence of international humanitarian partners - UNHCR, BRAC etc - in the face of such blatant collective punishment is a dereliction of their protection mandate. It transforms their presence on the island from a safeguard into a silent endorsement of the CiC’s unchecked authority.

Related Reading:

Who Rules at the Camps
Dhaka Tribune (December, 2025)

Unravelling Bhasan Char: Bangladesh’s island for Rohingya refugees
DVB English (December, 2025)

Shut Down Bhasan Char Now
Counterpoint (June, 2025)

Bangladesh’s Island Warehouse for Rohingya Refugees
Failed Architecture (April, 2025)

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Eid arrives in the camps, and it is marked, observed, and adapted.

Children wear new clothes where they can. Decorations appear along bamboo frames and tarpaulin walls. Families visit graves.

These are not scenes of normal life. But they are not reducible to crisis either. For a moment, the camps hold something else - ritual, memory, and the insistence on continuity. Even here.

Eid in the camps is one of those moments where the 'bare life' narrative of Giorgio Agamben reaches its limit- people are not just victims; they are remembering, mourning, dressing up, performing normality under constraint. The camps are intended as 'bare life,' but they fail to remain so. The state may try to strip these people down to mere biological existence but the act of "dressing up" is a radical political middle finger.

There are no rags here in the image above - only care, colour, and deliberate presentation. The conditions are impoverished. The life within them is not reducible to that. Many people carry an unspoken expectation that refugees should look visibly deprived at all times. These images disrupt that, and the disruption is not cosmetic. It is political.

The dominant imagery associated with camps is, of course, queues, malnutrition, mud and desperation. And at times, arrested Rohingya paraded under armed guard. But life does not organise itself so narrowly. It spills outward into ritual, into decoration, into the insistence on marking time.

At the same time, calling all this an example of “resilience” is a trap. It turns a political failure into a personal compliment, praising people for their endurance instead of asking why they are being crushed in the first place.

“Resilience” is comfortable for systems of management. Because if people are resilient, then reduced rations, restricted movement, and suspended futures can all be absorbed into a narrative of endurance.

When we use that word, we stop looking at the walls of the camp and start looking at the smiles of the victims, and we make their survival feel like a heartwarming story rather than a systemic crime.

These photos do not show people "bouncing back"; there is no "back" to go to. It is continuity under constraint. These rituals aren't about hope. They are about the refusal to be erased. People maintain their social lives not because they are "tough," but because life demands organisation even in a cage. To call it "resilience" is to offer a sedative that masks a crime. Calling it "continuity" keeps the machinery of injustice in plain sight.

The camps are designed to contain a people.
But even here, their sense of the world is not contained.

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It looks at how Rohingya refugees themselves are interpreting Bangladesh’s new government - not through official statements, but through lived experience in the camps.

Speaking to refugees across very different positions, from those who fled multiple times, to those embedded in camp governance structures, to individuals connected to armed networks, the piece shows how hope, fear and strategy coexist.

What emerges is not a single “community view,” but a fragmented political landscape:

• Some hope for expanded rights while in exile.

• Some fear a return to earlier cycles of coercive repatriation.

• Some are already recalculating in light of Bangladesh’s engagement with the Arakan Army.

• Others are thinking through the implications of the ICJ case and how even “victory” could be used to accelerate return.

Set against this, diaspora statements present a far more unified and optimistic picture often invoking 1978 and 1992 as precedents. A similar tone is reflected in parts of the internal Rohingya leadership structures facilitated and curated by Bangladesh’s Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner (RRRC), including the United Council of Rohingya (UCR).

After publication, I realised I had omitted a relevant perspective from within that structure. One of UCR’s presidents, Khin Maung, told me:

“I have optimism about the next government. It depends on our engagement with them. They have a success story on Rohingya refugee repatriation.”

While diaspora organisations and Khin Maung invoke past “successful” repatriations, many refugees recall those same moments very differently. As always, the reality on the ground is more fragmented and more politically aware than is often assumed.

Read here:

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Related Reading:

The Rohingya are perennial pawns in Bangladesh’s politics

My essay on the myth of Rohingya “aid dependency” has also been republished by Counterpoint BD. It challenges not just a lazy narrative, but one that serves institutional interests - showing how refugees work, trade and survive despite heavy restrictions. What is framed as dependency is actively produced, structured and maintained.

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The Doctor on the Motorbike: The Legacy of Cato Aall

Long before the Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar became a permanent fixture of global headlines, there were individuals inside the humanitarian system who saw what was happening and refused to look away.

One of them was Cato Aall, a Norwegian physician and nutrition scientist who travelled between the refugee camps during the 1978 Rohingya crisis on a small motorbike, measuring rations, mortality rates, and the unfolding nutritional collapse.

What he documented was startling. Refugees were receiving barely enough calories to survive. While many officials preferred reassuring language about aid provision, Aall warned bluntly that the camps were drifting toward what he called an “artificial famine-like condition.”

In a humanitarian system often constrained by political sensitivities, Aall did something rare - he insisted that science, the simple arithmetic of calories and survival, could not be ignored.

The article draws on archival material, contemporaneous reports from the 1978 refugee crisis, and interviews conducted more recently with people familiar with Aall’s work. It revisits Aall’s warnings and asks what they reveal about the long history of Rohingya aid policies and how debates about rations, assistance, and control continue to echo today.

The article also argues that Cato Aall deserves to be remembered as one of the earliest voices to document, with clarity and courage, the human cost of Rohingya displacement.

When Disappearances Disappear: The Case of Dil Mohammed

Bangladesh’s Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances was hailed as a landmark step toward accountability for the abuses of the previous era. However, for the Rohingya community, the promise of justice remains a hollow echo.

For many families, the commission represented a rare chance that long-ignored cases might finally receive official scrutiny.

But one disappearance stands out for its absence.

Dil Mohammed, a Rohingya community leader, was detained in circumstances that the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention later characterised as an enforced disappearance involving Bangladeshi security agencies. The UN ruling was formally communicated to the authorities.

Yet when the commission published its final report, Dil Mohammed’s case did not appear.

The forthcoming piece examines how a case already recognised at the international level appears to have slipped through the gaps of a national inquiry. Through interviews with legal experts, commissioners, and the family, it asks a simple but troubling question:

How does a disappearance disappear from the record?

Taken together, these two stories sadly speak to a recurring problem in the history of the Rohingya crisis. That is how evidence is produced, ignored, rediscovered, or sometimes quietly omitted!

In 1978, Cato Aall insisted that the basic science of human survival could not be wished away. Fifty years later, questions remain about how certain Rohingya cases are recorded, or not recorded, within official investigations. Both pieces look at what happens when uncomfortable facts meet institutional reluctance.

Both of these articles will be landing in your inbox soon. If you haven't already, ensure you are a subscriber to get the stories as soon as they go live.

Video used with permission.

Here is what the individual using the loudhailer is saying:

”One of the main reasons why food assistance in the camps has dropped from $12 to $8 and later to $7 is the buying and selling of ration food by some individuals.

Those who are selling food and those who are buying it have, through these activities, created a major negative impact on the food assistance received by the entire Rohingya community living in the camps.

Today, RRRC representative Mizanur Rahman visited the camp and stated that NGO workers and government officials have collected various photos and information about individuals involved in buying and selling rations and have sent them to higher authorities.

Based on this information, it is being assumed that around 80% of people supposedly do not need food assistance. As a result, there is now a risk that around 80% of food assistance could be reduced in the future.

Everyone is therefore being strictly warned about this issue. If anyone is caught selling food, religious scholars (ulema) and responsible community members will confiscate that food.

If rations are seen being sold openly on the streets or in public places, they will be collected immediately and handed over to the WFP (World Food Programme). Photos and information about people involved in ration trading have already been collected.

Because of the actions of a few individuals, hundreds of people are now facing danger and difficulties. From today onwards, if anyone in Nayapara Registered Camp is caught selling food, that food will be taken and submitted directly to WFP, and authorities will be informed that the person concerned does not require food assistance.

If necessary, a recommendation will be made to completely stop their food assistance. From today, ordinary residents, religious scholars, and the youth are being called upon to work together to prevent this activity.

Those who are buying and selling rations openly on the roads are requested to please stop this activity immediately. About 20 years ago, ration trading existed only on a very limited scale - for example, if someone needed 1 kg or 2 kg, they would privately exchange it near their homes. But now entire sacks of food are being sold openly on the roads, which is completely against the rules.

Previously, some food sacks marked with the American aid logo were found to have reached Myanmar, and NGO and government officials received reports about this. This created the perception that Rohingya were smuggling aid food elsewhere. As a result, food sacks with the American flag marking were stopped from being supplied.

Insha’Allah, we will all work together to stop such activities. No one - no matter how influential they are - will be allowed to sell food. Shops located along the roads must also refrain from selling such food. If anyone wants to do business, they must do so according to the rules set for the camp.

Similarly, action will also be taken against those buying and selling gas (LPG). If anyone sells food or LPG provided by WFP or the United Nations, strict action will be taken against them. Everyone is once again warned - please refrain from such activities.”

So let’s break that down.

For years, international agencies and officials have repeated that Rohingya refugees are “fully dependent on aid.” Yet this announcement from a loudhailer in Teknaf acknowledges something quite different - a functioning market inside the camps. People are selling rations, others are buying them, shops are trading food, and entire sacks are reportedly appearing on the road.

This should not be surprising. Refugees are denied legal work and freedom of movement, yet they still need cash to meet everyday needs that rations do not cover — medicine, transport, phone data, and other basic expenses. Informal markets inevitably emerge in such conditions. It happens in almost every refugee setting from Jordan to Kenya. When they do, authorities often treat them as violations rather than as evidence of an economy struggling to function under extreme restrictions.

The result is a familiar cycle. Dependency is imposed, survival strategies emerge, and those strategies are then punished as abuse of aid.

The announcement mentions that “80% of people supposedly do not need food assistance” based on the fact that trading exists. This is a classic case of misinterpreting data. The Authority’s Logic: They are selling it, so they have too much. The Human Logic: I am hungry, but my child is sick and I need cash for medicines more than I need this extra kilo of rice.

Seen in this light, the loudhailer message is less about food trading than about disciplining the informal economy of the camps. It attempts to reassert a model in which refugees are expected to consume aid passively, even though the realities of camp life make that impossible.

And that is precisely the contradiction explored in my recent essay - a system that describes refugees as dependent while simultaneously suppressing the economic activities that allow them to survive.

Another striking feature of the announcement is the call for ulema, community leaders, youth and ordinary residents to monitor ration trading and confiscate food. In other words, refugees are being asked to inform on one another and seize food from neighbours who are simply trying to survive. The message makes clear that photos of suspected traders have already been collected and that anyone caught selling rations may have their assistance stopped entirely. What is presented as community responsibility is, in practice, a system of intimidation in which the authorities and aid system push the burden of enforcement onto the refugees themselves.

And one can easily see RRRC Chief Mizanur Rahman’s imprint here - the frustration of the $12-to-$7 ration cut is redirected away from the providers and toward fellow refugees.

You can read my essay here:

Creshendo

How the Aid Industry Turned Rohingya Survival into a Business Model

This month’s guest author Shafiur Rahman is a journalist and documentary filmmaker focusing on the politics of refugee management in South and Southeast Asia. He writes the Rohingya Refugee News newsletter…

Read more

2 months ago · Shafiur Rahman and Creshendo

My article takes that premise and applies it to a difficult reality. Nearly nine years after fleeing genocide, one million-plus Rohingya refugees remain confined to camps where legal work, mobility, and economic integration are tightly restricted.

In that time, the humanitarian system has normalised a model of managed dependency. As WFP now introduces tiered food rations, the contradiction becomes clearer - refugees are described as “100 per cent dependent,” yet the system quietly assumes they are already coping through informal work and remittances. The piece argues that dependency in the Rohingya camps is not a natural condition - it is a policy choice.

The essay draws on a growing body of research that complicates the narrative of total dependency. Surveys by Human Rights Watch and the Norwegian Refugee Council have long found that large numbers of Rohingya refugees work informally in and around the camps despite formal prohibitions. More recently, the World Bank and UNHCR’s labour market study “Two Settlements, Two Diverging Paths” shows that roughly one-third of working-age Rohingya had worked in the previous year. A policy brief by Mohammad Salehin and Mizanur Rahman for the Peace Research Institute Oslo also outlines practical ways regulated camp-based livelihoods could reduce aid dependency without creating major “pull factors.”

Check it out.

But the images themselves tell another story.

In one widely shared photograph, dozens of men sit inside the meeting venue listening to speeches. Outside, along the edge of the building, a group of Rohingya women sit in a row of plastic chairs under the trees. They appear to have been invited to attend the meeting but were not given space inside. They are also seated perpendicular to the meeting, not facing it.

The contrast is difficult to miss. The discussion about the future of an entire people takes place indoors, while the women sit outside.

One Rohingya youth, Mohammed Fahad Ali, posted a blunt comment beneath the image:

“If you cannot provide them enough space inside, why did you call them to attend the meeting? The whole world gives women a front seat in meetings and conferences. What kind of behavior is this?”

The photograph of the women later disappeared from the UCR page. I asked Khin Maung, one of the presidents of UCR what this was all about. He has not answered as yet.

Deleting the comments

The complaints did not stop there.

Several Rohingya who attempted to question the organisation in the comment section say their remarks were removed. One commenter wrote:

“UCR deletes if you mention the truth.”

He said he had suggested improvements and asked questions about the meeting, but his comment was deleted instead of answered.

For some observers, the issue is not simply about one meeting or one photograph. It raises a larger question - how an organisation claiming to represent more than a million Rohingya handles criticism from its own community.

“If we cannot give suggestions or speak honestly,” the commenter wrote, “who gave them the authority to represent 1.2 million Rohingya people?”

UCR signs off its statements with the slogan “For Unity, Accountability, and Community Strength.” For many Rohingya observers, the question remains who exactly is being unified, who is accountable to whom, and where the community sits in that arrangement.

The familiar pattern of camp politics

Another criticism relates to the selection process for representatives. According to community members, UCR asked block-level leaders, known as majhis, to nominate five individuals from each block.

But some refugees say the process quickly reproduced the same problems that already exist in camp governance.

In Camp-5, community members reported that certain majhis selected relatives, sons and close associates instead of holding a broader consultation.

One Rohingya woman, Alisha Noor Aziz, wrote publicly to the UCR leadership asking them to review the process:

“Many vulnerable families feel they were not given a fair opportunity and that power is being misused.”

The complaint echoes a familiar criticism of camp governance structures - that is, representation often circulates within small networks of influence rather than emerging from open community participation.

Meetings without results

Others have raised a more fundamental question - what do these meetings actually achieve.

One Rohingya commentator put it bluntly:

“Years continue to pass, meetings increase, but meaningful results are rarely seen.”

Photos are taken. Statements are issued. Speeches are delivered. But for ordinary refugees, daily life in the camps remains largely unchanged.

The criticism reflects a growing frustration inside the camps. Many Rohingya say they see a constant stream of gatherings in the name of advocacy, consultation or coordination, yet very little visible progress on the issues that matter most to them - protection, rights, and a credible path to return.

Representation or performance?

The controversy also touches on a deeper question about the role of organisations like UCR inside the humanitarian system.

In earlier reporting, I noted how UCR leaders publicly supported changes introduced by Camp-in-Charge officials, including the replacement of the traditional majhi system with small committees selected by the authorities. You can read that post here:

At the time, UCR joint president, Khin Maung, praised the initiative and promised to support its implementation across the camps.

That language sounded less like independent community representation and more like an organisation helping to legitimise administrative decisions already made by the authorities. (After I asked Khin Maung if it will further concentrate power - he deleted his post…notice the pattern?)

The latest meeting photos, and the complaints that followed them, reinforce a similar impression. The meetings are well organised. The gilets and banners are printed. The speeches are delivered. The photographs circulate.

But for many Rohingya watching from the camps or, in the case of the women in the photograph, from just outside the meeting hall, the exercise increasingly looks less like representation and more like performance.

More about UCR HERE.

From 1 April 2026, the World Food Programme will no longer provide equal monthly food assistance to Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar and Bhasan Char.

Instead, households will be divided into three categories:

• “Extremely food insecure” – $12 per person

• “Highly food insecure” – $10 per person

• “Food insecure” – $7 per person

The shift is described as a Targeting and Prioritisation Exercise (TPE). WFP says it is a way to ensure that “those who are more food insecure receive more assistance” so that everyone reaches a similar minimum level of food security.

That is the official line. But this move is not neutral. It is political. And it quietly undermines one of the central myths of the Rohingya response.

First, this is the explainer WFP has produced. It is not on their website as yet. However, refugees have been shown these documents.

The End of Blanket Assistance

For years, Rohingya refugees have been described as “100 per cent dependent on aid.” The phrase is repeated by UN agencies, celebrity ambassadors, and donor governments alike. You may remember reading this post I made:

Yet this new policy introduces differentiation. So think about it - if all Rohingya households were equally dependent, then there would be no basis for tiered rations. Everyone would require the same transfer.

Instead, WFP now recognises that:

• Some households can cope better than others.

• Some require less assistance to reach the minimum caloric threshold.

• Some are considered less “vulnerable” because they contain able-bodied adult men.

In Group 3, the lowest ration category, are “male-headed households with able-bodied men and without members with disability.”

Pause on that. The assumption embedded here is unmistakable. Able-bodied labour capacity reduces vulnerability. But how, exactly, does labour capacity reduce vulnerability in camps where refugees are legally prohibited from working?

The answer is obvious to anyone who has spent time inside the fences.

Because people work anyway.

The Implicit Admission

This targeting exercise is not an admission of self-sufficiency. Rohingya refugees remain structurally blocked from formal employment.

But it is an implicit acknowledgement of economic differentiation inside the camps. Households cope through informal day labour, small trading, remittances, “volunteer” stipends, market resale of food and risky external work.

In other words, survival is already partially market-mediated.

The long-standing narrative of uniform dependency was always a simplification - useful for fundraising, useful for moral clarity, and useful for donor messaging.

This policy quietly concedes what field reality has long shown: some households are drowning, others are treading water.

And now WFP is pricing the difference.

This Is Not Unique to the Rohingya

Those who follow humanitarian policy will recognise this move immediately. Vulnerability-based targeting is standard WFP practice in protracted crises. It has been rolled out in Lebanon and Jordan for Syrian refugees, Kenya’s Dadaab and Kakuma camps, Uganda, Yemen, South Sudan and Ethiopia.

The pattern is familiar. As funding declines, blanket assistance becomes fiscally unsustainable. Agencies respond by introducing vulnerability scoring systems, and recalibrating transfers according to assessed levels of need. The language is one of efficiency and better targeting. In practice, however, it is rationing: reducing assistance for those deemed “lower risk” in order to stretch shrinking budgets. The Rohingya response has simply reached the stage where universal provision can no longer be afforded.

The Logic of Triage not Protection

WFP insists this approach ensures “no one is left behind.” But targeting always creates tiers of protection. Some families will receive $12 per person. Others will receive $7.

In a context where refugees are legally barred from formal work, mobility, and land access, that difference is not trivial.

The irony is sharp. I repeat, for years, the Rohingya have been described as wholly dependent. Now they are being divided into degrees of dependency.

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The Warning Not to Sell Food and the Policing of Survival

One small line in the notice stands out:

“Avoid selling any part of the food assistance you receive.”

Why include that? Because food resale exists. And food resale only exists where markets exist. And markets only exist where economic activity exists. Which means that even in the most controlled humanitarian environment in the world, informal economies pulse beneath the narrative of dependency.

The targeting notice includes a familiar line - beneficiaries are encouraged not to sell any part of their food assistance.

But in practice, WFP now does more than encourage.

In certain distribution points in Teknaf, cooking oil bottles are partially opened before being handed to refugees. WFP’s spokepserson, Kun Li, confirmed this in writing to me, describing it as an “exceptional measure” introduced to reduce the risk of resale after WFP-branded oil appeared in local markets.

Read that again.

Food assistance is opened at the point of distribution to prevent resale. This is framed as safeguarding integrity. It is also an unmistakable signal of distrust. Many refugees describe it as humiliating and punitive, treating an entire population as suspect at the very moment they receive basic assistance.

Resale does not occur in a vacuum. It happens because food rations do not cover the full cost of life in the camps. Families need cash for medicine, fuel, phone data, transport, debt, and countless other expenses that humanitarian food baskets do not address. Converting oil into cash is not misuse; it is adaptation.

Yet the system responds by tamper-proofing survival. The same structure that prohibits formal work, restricts mobility, and limits income now intervenes at the moment of food distribution to prevent households from converting aid into liquidity.

Dependency is permitted. Flexibility is not. Watch the video:

Video from a Teknaf distribution point showing a WFP store assistant removing the WFP label and opening the seal of a cooking oil bottle before handing it to a Rohingya refugee household. WFP confirmed that seal-opening is an “exceptional measure” introduced to reduce resale of humanitarian assistance.

What This Really Signals

This shift does not mean empowerment. It does not mean integration. It does not mean rights. It means being measured against a labour capacity you are legally forbidden to use. And it means the Rohingya response has entered the long phase of managed austerity.

Donor funding fell sharply in 2023 and is projected to decline further. Protracted crises become normalised. Rations shrink. Targeting replaces universalism. The humanitarian system adapts. But it does not transform. The more uncomfortable question remains untouched. That is, why nine years after the 2017 exodus are Rohingya refugees still legally prohibited from formal work while simultaneously being assessed on their labour capacity?

Dependency is first manufactured through restriction. Then it is tiered through targeting. And finally, it is budgeted. This is the quiet recalibration of survival.

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Fortify Rights has built its reputation documenting atrocity crimes, most notably against the Rohingya in Myanmar. It now seeks to extend that authority through a newly formed “Leadership Council,” a group of high-profile parliamentarians, jurists and others. Fortify Rights hopes that they will bring influence, reach and political leverage to the cause of accountability.

On paper, this is a consolidation of moral authority. In practice, it raises a deeper question about what kind of universality is being institutionalised and what happens when the language of “human rights for all” meets the political limits of Western alliances.

The composition of the council itself begins to answer that question.

Fortify Rights putting Lord Alton on a “Leadership Council” to confront atrocity crimes is a study in how Western human‑rights branding can launder selective outrage and erase Palestinians while preaching universality.

Alton’s statement for Fortify Rights is pure abstraction. He says, “Genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes – mass atrocities – are perpetrated around the world with impunity… It is an honour… to shine a light on the darkest corners of the world.” The problem is not that he talks about genocide and impunity; it is that when Gaza became one of the clearest contemporary test cases, he chose darkness over light.

A detailed investigation into UK Parliament’s genocide analysis apparatus (formal and informal structures around genocide prevention and accountability) notes that, three months into Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, Alton wrote a PoliticsHome piece marking the 75th anniversary of the Genocide Convention without mentioning Gaza once, even as he foregrounded other atrocity situations.

The same reporting records that in a January 2024 atrocity‑prevention roundtable he urged “caution” about using the word genocide for Gaza so as not to “dilute the term,” despite having deployed “genocide” liberally in relation to China’s treatment of Uyghurs.

So when Alton now wraps himself in Fortify Rights’ language about “mass atrocities… around the world,” he is trading on a moral vocabulary he carefully bracketed out when it threatened to implicate a Western ally - Israel.

On his website, Lord Alton poses against Big Ben under a Tolkien line: “There is some good in the world, and it’s worth fighting for,” inviting us to see him as a guardian of the persecuted. Yet the same figure could not bring himself to name Gaza in his Genocide Convention anniversary article and urged colleagues not to apply the term genocide there. He faithfully echoed the government’s “we stand with Israel” script in the Lords. The disconnect between the quote and his record is the point - the good that is “worth fighting for” appears to stop where British and Israeli interests begin.

Read Alton’s Fortify Rights full quote in the graphic above against his Gaza record, and it becomes almost obscene. Gaza was not an obscure case. It was the central test of whether the language of genocide prevention would be applied consistently or hedged when a Western ally was involved. On that test, Alton faltered.

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Fortify Rights describes the new Leadership Council as a body that will “intervene in moments of crisis” and ensure “perpetrators of atrocity crimes face real consequences.” They cast Alton as “one of the world’s leading parliamentary voices on human rights… and crimes against humanity.” That sales pitch relies on people not looking too closely at where Alton’s voice suddenly drops.

Yet this is the figure Fortify Rights now presents as a guardian against impunity - a watchdog that growls at Beijing and Pyongyang but curls up when the bombs are Israeli.

Some sort of error?

David Alton did not slip through Fortify Rights’ vetting net. His appointment sits comfortably alongside a wider ecosystem of Zionist figures whose careers are built on a language of universal justice that reliably short‑circuits when it reaches Israel–Palestine. Irwin Cotler and Tom Tugendhat are also on the council, and they exemplify the same ecosystem from different angles - one as the jurist who universalises antisemitism to delegitimise scrutiny of Israel, the other as the security hawk who recodes Palestinian claims as a counter‑terrorism problem.

Cotler’s admirers sell his Zionism as a natural extension of his human‑rights pedigree. Critics see something else entirely - a doctrine in which the Nuremberg principles become tools to shelter Israel from accountability by branding most criticism as a “new antisemitism.” Israel is cast as the “collective Jew” whose exceptional vulnerability justifies exceptional immunity.

Cotler argues that while “classical” antisemitism targeted individual Jews, the “new” form targets the “collective Jew” - the State of Israel. In short, criticism of Israel is frequently recoded as antisemitic. In practice, the framework blurs the line between antisemitism and structural critique of Israel, so that a wide range of political and legal challenges can be recast as anti‑Jewish bigotry. He is the primary architect of the theory of "New Antisemitism.”

Tom Tugendhat’s Zionism is less a matter of personal faith and more a rigid application of neoconservative realpolitik, where the "special relationship" with Israel is maintained through a convenient blindness to international law. Detractors, such as former colleague Alan Duncan, have labelled his stance "extremist." Duncan argued that Tugendhat’s refusal to condemn illegal West Bank settlements reveals a selective morality that prioritises the interests of a foreign state over the universal principles of justice he claims to champion.

Tugendhat’s view casts Hamas and other Palestinian actors as little more than the “terrorist acolytes” and “paymasters in Tehran” nexus, rather than movements rooted in a century of dispossession. His view is designed to strip the conflict of its indigenous and colonial dimensions.

In parallel, his focus on banning Palestine‑focused direct‑action groups such as Palestine Action, and including them in the network of domestic extremism, extends that same logic into the UK. Palestinian solidarity is reframed as a security threat to be shut down, rather than a political challenge grounded in claims to anti‑colonial justice.

Together, Cotler and Tugendhat illustrate the ecosystem Fortify Rights has chosen to institutionalise. It is one in which Israel is treated as an exception to the universal standards they invoke elsewhere.

Fortify Rights and the problem of selective credibility

Fortify Rights has built its reputation on extensive documentation of Rohingya persecution and Myanmar military atrocities, and on centering survivor‑led voices. The new Leadership Council is framed as a way to “close the gap between documentation and decision‑making,” bringing in people with “platforms, influence, and expertise” to act when civilian lives are at risk.

Putting Alton et al. in that role undermines their own narrative in three ways.

It signals that you can help “end impunity” while refusing to apply genocide language to Gaza even after multiple UN experts and organisations have warned that Israel’s conduct may amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity, and the ICJ has found a plausible risk of genocide.

It tells Palestinians, and anyone paying attention, that Fortify Rights is comfortable elevating figures whose own records exemplify the “double standard” Declassified UK identifies as leaving Palestinians “short of dependable allies” in genocide‑prevention circles.

It erodes the organisation’s claim to be driven by “community‑based human rights defenders and survivor‑led perspectives,” because the survivors of Gaza are precisely those Alton et al. have been most reluctant to stand alongside in legal and political terms.

When your mission statement says “human rights for all” but your chosen human‑rights champions treat Palestinians as a reputational hazard rather than a constituency, the gap between copy and practice becomes impossible to ignore.

What this says about Fortify Rights “Leadership Council”

To use the language of Declassified UK, there are figures in this space “for whom the idea of holding Israel to account is anathema.” This is not to suggest that every architect of international criminal accountability on the council operates this way; figures like Sir Geoffrey Nice and James Silk have applied the same legal tools to Israel’s siege of Gaza and apartheid structures that they apply elsewhere.

However, Fortify Rights’ decision to flank them with people whose universalism reliably falters at the Green Line reveals a cynical understanding of power. Fortify Rights understands how power works. It is precisely because Lord Alton sits in the Lords and chairs the Joint Committee on Human Rights that he is an attractive appointee. But power that only ever points in one direction is not neutral!

By elevating figures whose advocacy for the Rohingya or Uyghurs exists alongside a conspicuous silence on Gaza, Fortify Rights has signalled the limits of its own universalism. This “Leadership Council” appears comfortable with a model of justice where certain victims deserve maximum solidarity, while Palestinians are reduced to a security narrative that keeps Israel permanently insulated from the standards applied everywhere else.

If Fortify Rights truly wants to “end impunity,” it should be confronting this double standard, rather than embedding it within its own leadership structure.

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Ukhia–Teknaf, formally Cox’s Bazar-4, is one of the most politically and strategically sensitive constituencies in Bangladesh. It lies along the Naf River on the Myanmar border and includes St Martin’s Island, the Marine Drive coastal corridor, hilly terrain, salt fields and the country’s largest concentration of Rohingya refugee camps. The constituency is shaped as much by geopolitics and security as by local development concerns.

The electorate numbers 375,658 voters across 11 unions and 115 polling centres. Of these, 192,806 are men and 182,852 are women, making female voters an increasingly decisive bloc. Teknaf accounts for 202,781 voters across six unions and 61 centres, while Ukhiya has 172,977 voters across five unions and 54 centres. The demographic balance means turnout patterns and women’s mobilisation could prove pivotal.

The seat is currently contested by two heavyweight candidates. The BNP has fielded Shahjahan Chowdhury, a four-time MP and former parliamentary whip. Jamaat-e-Islami has nominated Principal Maulana Nur Ahmed Anwari, a long-time union chairman and district-level organiser. Smaller parties are also contesting. They are Maulana Nurul Haque of Islami Andolon Bangladesh and Saifuddin Khaled of the National Democratic Movement (NDM). Both are marginal players in the race, with little organisational presence on the ground.

Beyond party rivalry, the constituency is shaped by several overlapping pressures. It hosts around 1.1 million Rohingya refugees in camps near Ukhiya and Teknaf. It sits on a porous international border that has long been associated with cross-border trade, migration and narcotics trafficking. It includes parts of the Chittagong Hill Tracts region, with its own history of militarisation and ethnic tension. Local voters consistently cite border security, employment, drug control, education and healthcare as priorities.

Because of this combination of geography, demography and security politics, Ukhiya–Teknaf is often described as one of the most sensitive constituencies in the country. What happens here is not just a local contest. It reflects how national parties position themselves on the Rohingya crisis, border control, regional security and development at the margins of the state.

If you have been following this newsletter, you will have seen my recent essays on how the Rohingya crisis is framed across Bangladeshi politics. I have argued that “repatriation” is no longer discussed as a rights-based solution but as a political tool.

If you have not read those articles, then watch this short clip from Ukhiya–Teknaf. It crystallises the mindset.

Here is the translation of what he says:

Journalist: Rohingya are a big problem in Ukhiya and Teknaf. What are your plans to resolve the problem?

Jamaat Candidate (Maulana Nur Ahmed Anwari): We have already talked about our plans to solve the Rohingya problem. Some are short-term and some are long-term. The main solution to the problem is to repatriate them with dignity. That is a domestic and international issue. There are some local issues, such as keeping them confined in camps and controlling the terrorist activities they carry out and spending the 25% government allocation for the local population for the welfare of the people. So that the people understand that we are getting some compensation for the damage caused by the Rohingyas and providing jobs for local boys and local men. By doing these things, our Rohingya problem will be solved to some extent in the short term. I hope.

In the interview, the Jamaat candidate says the main solution is to “repatriate them with dignity.” But he immediately pivots to keeping Rohingya confined in camps, controlling what he calls “terrorist activities,” and ensuring that 25 percent of the mandated allocations for the Rohingya go to locals so they feel compensated for the “damage caused by the Rohingyas.” He promises jobs for local men.

Listen carefully to the sequence.

Repatriation is invoked first, as a moral headline. But the substance is about confinement, control, compensation and constituency management.

The Rohingya are framed not as rights-bearing refugees, but as a security risk, an economic burden and a resource to be leveraged for local political benefit. The most revealing line is this: “So that people understand that we are getting some compensation for the damage caused by the Rohingyas.”

That is textbook surplus-population logic. The Rohingya become an externalised cost, a bargaining chip, a justification for redistributing resources to voters. They are governed as a problem to be managed.

What is missing is just as important. There is nothing about citizenship in Myanmar. Nothing about protection guarantees. Nothing about non-refoulement. Nothing about rights inside the camps, inclusion, education access, labour regularisation or political voice.

The word dignity is there. In Bangladesh, this now functions as a moral garnish rather than a rights framework. It is sprinkled everytime “repatriation” is mentioned. Like coriander, it makes everything taste better.

And this is precisely the argument I make in my recent essays. Across parties, repatriation is articulated less as a pathway to justice and more as a mechanism to stabilise domestic politics and reassure voters.

In this video, the BNP candidate, Shahjahan Chowdhury, is promising everything to everyone without any evidence that any of it is within his power to deliver.

Here is the translation:

“We have to think economically. By economic thinking I mean the problem or crisis that has been created between Burma and Bangladesh over the refugees. These refugees have to be sent back. They must be given citizenship there. Arrangements must be made so they can buy land and become landowners. They must be given the opportunity there to study, to do business, and to vote. Once those arrangements are made, they can be sent back.

Who can do this? Who did it before? Shaheed Ziaur Rahman did it. Khaleda Zia did it. Now, if anyone can do it, Tarique Rahman can do it, and we can do it, since I am here. First there is Tarique Rahman, below him I am here. There is no problem. We will send them back, and good relations with Burma will be re-established. The corridor will be opened. Bring as many goats as you can.”

I am not sure about the last line! It appears to be a colloquial aside, possibly referring to trade or livestock movement under a reopened corridor.

What Shahjahan Chowdhury says is revealing in a slightly different way, but it sits within the same political grammar.

He frames the Rohingya issue first as an economic problem between Bangladesh and Myanmar. His solution is to “send them back”, but with citizenship, land ownership, access to education, business opportunities and even voting rights in Myanmar. He invokes Ziaur Rahman and Khaleda Zia as proof that strong leadership can make this happen, and promises that under Tarique Rahman it will be done again. He adds that bilateral relations with Myanmar will be restored and a corridor will be opened.

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On the surface, this sounds more expansive than the Jamaat candidate’s language. He speaks of citizenship, land and rights in Myanmar. But the critical question is whether anyone in Myanmar has committed to deliver any of this?? I hardly need to remind you that there is no indication that Myanmar’s current authorities, whether the junta or the Arakan Army as de facto power in much of Arakan, have agreed to restore citizenship, recognise land rights or guarantee political participation for the Rohingya!

Like the Jamaat candidate, he does not speak about rights in Bangladesh while the Rohingya remain there. There is no mention of legal status in the camps, labour rights, education expansion, or protection guarantees pending return. The focus is on sending them back and normalising bilateral relations.

What both candidates reveal, in different tones, is the same underlying logic. The Rohingya are not being spoken about as people with rights that bind states under law. They are spoken about as a problem to be removed, a burden to be compensated for, or a diplomatic chip to be traded. One promises confinement and compensation. The other promises citizenship, land and corridors without any evidence that Myanmar is willing to concede any of it. In both cases, repatriation functions as political theatre. It reassures voters. It projects strength. It displaces responsibility. But it does not answer the central question: how will the Rohingya return safely, voluntarily, and with enforceable rights in a Myanmar that still denies them belonging?

Related Reading:

The Rohingya are perennial pawns in Bangladesh’s politics (Himal)

How Bangladesh’s elections won’t solve the Rohingya refugee crisis (DVB English)

Rohingya repatriation as a governance tool in Bangladesh (Frontier Myanmar)

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The core argument is simple. No matter who forms the next government, Rohingya repatriation will continue to be used as a political tool rather than treated as a genuine, rights-based solution.

I look at how:

1. The interim government has framed the Rohingya as a “national burden” and doubled down on managed repatriation theatrics.

2. The BNP rewrites its own history of past repatriations while promising to “send them back” again.

3. Jamaat pushes a more ideological, irredentist vision of return that bears little relation to realities on the ground in Rakhine.

4. UNHCR’s new leadership and regional powers like China and India are aligning around a language of “durable solutions” that risks prioritising speed and optics over refugee rights.

Meanwhile, more than a million Rohingya remain confined to overcrowded camps in Cox’s Bazar, with shrinking aid, tight restrictions on work and movement, and worsening conditions.

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My conclusion? Regardless of who wins the election, repatriation is likely to remain a performance of governance rather than a genuine solution for the Rohingya.

That does not mean it is harmless. On the contrary, the danger is that a tightly managed “pilot” repatriation staged for political and diplomatic effect could still expose Rohingya to coercion, insecurity, and return to conditions that remain fundamentally unsafe and discriminatory in Arakan. Also, the Rohingya are likely to remain the exception to Bangladesh’s democratic reset. They will be governed through security, diplomacy, and image management rather than through public debate or accountability.

You can read the full piece here:
https://www.himalmag.com/politics/bangladesh-rohingya-election-bnp-jamaat

The broadcast is speaking first and foremost to the Bangladeshi public. Whether intended or not, it tells viewers that the Rohingya sit outside the law, that their movement beyond barbed wire is inherently suspect, and that their presence beyond the camps threatens the order of the election. In this way, they are recast from survivors of military violence in Myanmar into a collective domestic threat in Bangladesh.

At the same time, it reassures the audience that the state is decisive and in command. Soldiers, APBn and police are moving in unison with rifles visible, trucks full, and control unmistakable. In doing so the Rohingya are turned into a visual prop for the performance of state power.

What we see on screen is not a neutral report by any means but a carefully arranged spectacle. A reporter stands in Balukhali with an army truck behind him, packed to the brim with Rohingya men. There are some men carrying children being escorted out of the area, all hemmed in by helmeted troops with automatic rifles. The camera lingers on their bodies in the truck, compressed and motionless, as if they were cargo rather than people who survived mass violence. Yes, that’s right. The Rohingya are not presented as people displaced by mass atrocity. They are presented as leaking bodies (“somehow they get out of the camps”), a security problem in motion and an uncontained population that must be hunted, rounded up, and sorted.

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Criminality is implied without ever being proved. Nothing is said about theft, assault or any specific offence, yet the visual grammar makes guilt the default. An armed soldier guards a truck full of Rohingya while the narration speaks of joint force operations beginning at 5 am. The effect is to naturalise the idea that these people must be controlled rather than protected.

Their reasons for leaving the camp, hunger, livelihoods, family, and medical needs, are not mentioned. No Rohingya voice is heard. We are told they are being taken to the camp, checked for cards, men separated from women, and those in rented rooms outside the camp identified and removed. This is presented as routine administration. But in visual terms, it echoes something far darker: sorting, categorising, containment, and confinement under armed guard.

Placed in the context of the election, the message becomes starker still. And we have been seeing it over and over the last few days. Democracy for Bangladesh is framed as requiring the immobilisation of Rohingya bodies. Their camps are sealed, their movements restricted, and any presence outside becomes justification for arrest. The election is presented as a moment of national order, and Rohingya are cast as the disorder that must be suppressed for that order to function.

I repeat, there is no discussion of why people might leave the camps or how long some have lived in nearby areas. There is no acknowledgement that they are being detained without committing a crime. There is no reflection on the ethics of parading people in the back of a military truck.

This video is a reminder that some people must be locked down like criminals so others can pretend their democracy is clean.

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Related Reading:

Elections, Violence and the Punishment of the Rohingya

Why is Bangladesh Sealing the Camps for the 2026 Elections

What Bangladesh’s Elections Really Mean for Rohingya Repatriation

How Images Shape Perceptions of the Rohingya

How the Promise of Repatriation Suspends Rohingya Rights

New OpED!

Over the past month, I have written three essays in three different places for Frontier Myanmar, DVB English, and in a longer analytical piece for Himal Southasian on what Bangladesh’s election will mean for the Rohingya. They look at different moments, different actors, and different arenas. But they have the same core argument.

This is what ties them together.

Repatriation is not primarily a humanitarian policy. It is a mode of governance

Across all three pieces, my starting point is simple. In Bangladesh, “repatriation” has not functioned as a plan to return Rohingya nor to restore Rohingya rights in Myanmar. It has functioned as a political instrument.

It has been used to signal moral leadership to the international community, assert sovereignty against humanitarian agencies, reassure domestic audiences that Rohingya will not “settle,” extract aid and diplomatic leverage, and discipline the refugee population inside the camps.

In other words, repatriation is less a solution to displacement than a governing tool. It is a way of managing a population that the state does not want to integrate but cannot expel.

Permanent temporariness is the point

All three essays challenge the idea that the Rohingya are simply “waiting” for return. What appears as humanitarian limbo is, in practice, a durable form of rule.

The camps are designed to feel temporary. We see flimsy shelters, restrictions on permanent materials, limited education and movement, and constrained livelihoods, even though this “temporary” condition is now entering its ninth year. This is not failure. It is a strategy.

Temporariness blocks claims to rights or local inclusion or integration while keeping the population bureaucratically manageable, contained, and governable.

Rights are deferred in the name of future return

The language of “voluntary, safe, and dignified return” sounds principled. But in practice, it often operates as a justification for doing very little now.

“Preparation for repatriation” becomes a reason to cap education, restrict mobility, limit work, and postpone legal protections, especially for women.

The promise of return thus works less as a pathway home and more as a moral rationale for denying rights in the present.

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Development cannot substitute for politics

A recurring theme in all three pieces is scepticism toward technocratic fixes, whether called “Rakhine reconstruction,” “pilot returns,” or development corridors.

Rebuilding infrastructure, offering cash assistance, or designing better camps may be necessary, but they are not sufficient. They do not address the core political problem: the denial of Rohingya citizenship, land rights, freedom of movement, and equal protection under the law in Myanmar.

Without enforceable rights, “reconstruction” risks becoming an alibi for exclusion and makes repatriation look practical while leaving the structure of apartheid intact.

Pilot repatriation is likely to be spectacle, not solution

I argue in all three pieces that a plausible near-term outcome is not mass return but carefully staged “pilot” repatriation.

This would be small in scale, highly managed, internationally branded, okayed by compliant Rohingya organisations, symbolically powerful, and largely disconnected from refugee consent or legal guarantees.

Such a scheme would allow Bangladesh to look decisive, UNHCR to look effective, and Myanmar’s powerholders to look cooperative while the underlying system of exclusion remains unchanged.

This is about surplus population management

Underlying all of this is a broader logic. The Rohingya are treated not as rights-bearing people but as a surplus population: to be biometrically counted, verified, contained, displayed, and periodically moved, but not integrated or included or fully restored to rights.

Aid sustains life without altering status. Security measures police boundaries without creating safety. Repatriation promises movement without delivering justice.

Elections change the messengers, not the message

Whether under Sheikh Hasina, the interim government, or a future BNP administration, the language shifts but the structure remains. Different parties use repatriation differently, viz. as moral branding, nationalist resolve, or ideological cause but all operate within the same underlying framework of containment.

That is why the Rohingya barely feature in electoral debate. Their governance sits outside normal democratic politics. Instead, it is shaped by donor diplomacy, security coordination, and international image-making.

The issue is absent from major party manifestos and electoral rallies. It mainly appears during donor visits or international conferences. This is further evidence that Rohingya governance operates outside Bangladesh’s normal democratic politics.

What this means going forward

My argument is not that repatriation is illegitimate in principle. Of course not. It is that repatriation without rights is not a solution. It is a form of control.

A serious policy would need to set out clear and enforceable conditions for return, backed by genuine monitoring in which refugees themselves can participate, alongside a definitive recognition of Rohingya citizenship in Myanmar. At the same time, it would have to move away from the current model of securitised governance inside Bangladesh and treat the camps as spaces of rights rather than areas ruled primarily through restrictions and policing.

Until then, “repatriation” will remain less a bridge home than a wall that keeps people in place. These three articles are, in different ways, an attempt to name that wall.

Further Reading:

How Bangladesh’s election won’t solve the Rohingya refugee crisis
DVB English

Rohingya repatriation as a governance tool in Bangladesh
Frontier Myanmar

On the night of 5 February, several people, including children, were shot in Ali Khali Camp 25 by individuals travelling on a BNP campaign truck that had entered the camp for election “miking.”

The Rohingya were supposed to be silent. Sealed in. Invisible. That is what the Election Commissioner demanded. Ahead of Bangladesh’s 13th national election, the state did not merely prepare polling stations. It prepared a lockdown of human beings.

The order was clear. No Rohingya could leave their camps. Checkpoints were to be tightened. Motorbikes and autorickshaws are banned. Markets closed. Social media and meetings shut down. Imams and majhis were to “educate” refugees not to get involved in politics. NGOs were to stay away. Mobile courts were to dispense summary sentencing. Joint forces were to patrol. And all political parties were told, solemnly, not to use Rohingya in campaigns. You can read the list here.

The justification? Risk. Crime. Security. Sabotage of the elections.

Election Commissioner Abul Fazal Mohammad Sanaullah said the camps must be “sealed.” He spoke as if the bamboo shelters of Ukhiya and Teknaf were militant holdouts, not crowded sites of hunger, trauma, and dependency.

This is the Bangladesh playbook: when democracy feels shaky, find a powerless enemy and lock them down.

Then reality intervened.

What actually happened in Ali Khali

On the night of 5 February, in Ali Khali camp 25, violence did not come from Rohingya. It came to them. A BNP campaign truck, blasting music, carrying people reportedly dancing and drinking alcohol, rolled into the camp to do election “miking.” Crowds gathered, as they always do when something unusual enters a place of enforced monotony.

Then shots were fired. Not by Rohingya. Not by “criminal networks in the camp.” Not by some mysterious outside infiltrator.

According to a camp-based report, the bullets came from people travelling in the election vehicle itself.

Five people were shot. Among them were:

• Host community children

• A Rohingya boy

• A Rohingya adult man

All are now in hospital.

While the state was busy banning Rohingya movement, banning Rohingya gatherings, banning Rohingya transport, and effectively placing them under collective punishment in the name of “electoral security,” armed campaigners were driving into the camp, drinking, blaring music, and firing weapons at people standing outside their own shelters.

The double standard laid bare

If Rohingya had fired those shots, we already know what the headlines would say.

“Rohingya criminals disrupt election.”
“Armed refugees threaten democracy.”

But because the accused are linked to a mainstream political campaign, we are told instead: “We don’t yet know who fired.” It was “random.” The Teknaf Model Police OC said: “Who fired the shots will be known later.” The 16 APBn commander said that “miscreants suddenly fired on the crowd” but added that it is not known who they were. The language becomes soft. The state becomes cautious. The narrative shifts.

So much for “protecting” the election. So much for sealing camps to prevent violence. The truth is simple. Rohingya were treated as a threat in advance, without evidence. Non-Rohingya campaigners were treated with leniency after real gun violence.

What this really shows

The Ali Khali shooting exposes the lie at the heart of the restrictions. The problem was always political impunity, armed campaigning, and a culture where violence travels with power.

By sealing camps, the state did not make elections safer. It simply made refugees more trapped and more vulnerable. They were told to stay inside for “their safety.” Then bullets came from outside. They were told not to gather. Then they were shot for gathering out of curiosity.

Bangladesh does not need to seal refugee camps to protect its elections. It needs to stop tolerating armed political muscle, stop weaponised campaigning, and stop scapegoating people who have no vote, no rights, and no voice.

Sealing Rohingya camps does not fix ballot rigging. It does not stop campaign violence. It does not create fair elections. It only deepens injustice.

The Ali Khali incident is a window into how power works. Free movement for those with political backing, collective punishment for those without it.

That is the scandal.

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I have a new essay out today in THROAT, where I try to think through how the Rohingya have been seen and mis-seen since 2017. It is not a conventional “crisis” piece. Instead, it is about the politics of images. How certain ways of photographing refugees become routine, and how these routine ways quietly shape what the public feels entitled to think, and what it is willing to ignore.

Read THROAT article

From the beginning of the Rohingya exodus, a familiar visual grammar took hold - columns of exhausted people crossing mud, mothers clutching children, and queues for aid. These images were not false, but they were partial. Over time, they hardened into a template, what we can call “refugee-ness” - a narrow repertoire that renders displaced people either as helpless victims or, later, as threats to be contained.

In the essay, I argue that this matters because images do political work. They help normalise policies, including barbed wire fences, movement restrictions, and internet bans, and they make structural harm look like misfortune or bad weather. Fires and landslides in the camps are routinely described as “accidents,” when in fact they are the predictable result of the conditions in which Rohingya are forced to live.

Alongside the text, THROAT is publishing a small selection of my photographs. They are meant less as illustration than as counter-frames - attempts to show ordinary life, dignity, and individuality that the dominant imagery so often erases.

Photography by refugees is important because it can challenge the visual habits that make displacement seem natural and inevitable. (More about this soon). And if “refugee-ness” reduces lives to categories, then looking differently is a small act of resistance. It does not fix the world, but it keeps it human.

You can read the full piece here.

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For decades, Bangladesh has governed the Rohingya not by resolving their displacement but by managing it - keeping them contained, rightless, and endlessly temporary. Repatriation is the fiction that sustains this system. It justifies denying rights. It excuses inaction.

Always “not yet,” always “soon,” always “voluntary, safe, and dignified.” But never real. It is a political horizon that never arrives. It allows the state to defer responsibility while extracting humanitarian aid and diplomatic leverage.

In this essay, I trace how repatriation has evolved from the openly coercive operations of 1978 and the 1990s to today’s performative promise. The logic hasn’t changed. Rohingya are moved when politically convenient, abandoned when not, and ruled through a language of return that has no destination.

Camps are designed to remain “temporary.” Work is allowed only informally. Education is capped. Mobility is restricted. Waiting is not a failure of policy - it is the policy.

I lay this out in a new essay for Frontier Myanmar, tracing how repatriation has become a tool of discipline and leverage. The risk now is a symbolic repatriation - small, staged, reversible, and rights-free that lets the world look away again. Read the full piece here:

👉 Read here: https://www.frontiermyanmar.net/en/rohingya-repatriation-as-a-governance-tool-in-bangladesh/

At 3:00am, 335 shelters burned down. Over 2,000 people lost everything. Latrines, water points, learning centres and mosques were destroyed. This is not unusual. Between 2018 and 2025, more than 2,400 fires have torn through the camps, affecting over 100,000 people.

At this scale, fire is no longer a “risk.” It is inevitable. It is structural.

The fiction of “temporary” shelters

Humanitarian agencies continue to describe Rohingya homes as “fragile” or “makeshift,” as if this were a regrettable technical flaw. It is not. Shelters remain flammable because permanence is politically prohibited.

For more than eight years, Rohingya refugees have been prevented from building durable homes, making their own safety upgrades, using fire-resistant materials at scale, expanding, or spacing their shelters.

This is not a funding oversight. It is a policy choice, enforced by the Bangladeshi state and quietly absorbed by the humanitarian system. Temporary shelters are not temporary anymore. They are permanent temporariness, designed to last just long enough to justify not improving them.

Overcrowding is not natural!

It is enforced. The NRC statement points to “densely packed structures” as if density were an environmental condition. In reality, refugees are confined to camps where movement is restricted and livelihoods are blocked. Relocation outside the camps is prohibited.

Therefore, overcrowding is not accidental. It is the architecture of containment. The camps function less as humanitarian spaces and more as zones of warehousing a surplus population where risk is externalised onto refugees.

When shelters burn, people are not rehoused. They are displaced sideways, into relatives’ huts, further increasing density and risk. Fire does not reset the system; it tightens it.

I posted the above photograph on Instagram in September 2020, along with others like it. Nothing here is accidental. This hillside camp is densely built, with shelters cut into steep slopes and packed along narrow footpaths. The structures are made from bamboo and plastic sheeting, leaving no buffer against fire and no clear routes for escape. Such layouts were permitted and maintained year after year. Fires in the camps are therefore not isolated incidents but structural consequences.

Fire is the predictable outcome of this arrangement, not an unforeseen disaster. What burns is not just shelters, but the fiction that this is a humanitarian failure rather than a policy choice. Aid agencies, like Care, speak of fire prevention and awareness, but this is the environment in which refugees are expected to stay safe. Training cannot compensate for a system that refuses permanence. Until that changes, the camps will keep burning.

If the hillside shows how density is forced uphill, this image shows how it is forced downward. Shelters fill the drainage channels and low ground, leaving no buffer against water, fire, or collapse. The camp expands into every available space because people are not allowed to build differently. Risk is not accidental here; it is cumulative.

The funding crisis as excuse

The press release repeatedly invokes the 2025 funding cuts, suggesting that safer shelters would exist if only donors had paid. But this framing obscures a deeper truth. That is, donors fund containment, not resolution. Aid sustains biological survival, not safety or dignity. Shelter is underfunded precisely because it signals permanence

Only 19.6% of required shelter funding was delivered in 2025. This is not an accident. It reflects an international consensus, unspoken but rigid, that Rohingya lives must be maintained cheaply and temporarily, not rebuilt properly.

Humanitarian funding does not fail randomly. It follows political priorities. I am not saying funding crises don’t matter. Funding crises matter because aid substitutes for rights.

Approval of semi-permanent shelters?

The approval of three semi-permanent shelter designs in December 2024 was presented as progress. But approvals without funding timelines are not solutions. They are gestures. The result is familiar. Designs are approved. Construction is stalled. Fires continue. Appeals are repeated.

This cycle allows all actors to express concern while nothing structurally changes.

What to call all this?

We have a situation where shelters are flammable by design, density is enforced by policy, movement is criminalised, and rebuilding is delayed indefinitely. In this situation, then, fire is no longer a disaster.
It is structural violence - predictable, recurring, and tolerated.

The Bangladeshi state has systematically restricted permanence to avoid any signal of settlement. Shelters are kept intentionally temporary to preserve the repatriation fiction.

Rohingya refugees are not merely victims of flame. They are victims of a system that accepts burning as a manageable cost of containment. Fires recur because risk is cheaper than reform.

The real question is not how do we respond to the next fire? It is, why are Rohingya refugees still forced to live in conditions where fire is inevitable Until that question is answered honestly in political, not humanitarian, terms, Camp 16 will not be the last camp to burn.

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