Does This Photo Expose Bangladesh’s Game?
What is the RSO doing with Bangladesh's National Security Intelligence?
Bangladesh’s involvement with the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO) has always been marked by contradiction and complicity. One day, Bangladesh brands the RSO as a criminal group and vows to root it out. The next, its leaders are seated as honoured guests at high-profile visits, rubbing shoulders with senior officials. Inconsistency? No, it is a deliberate strategy.
A recent screenshot of a broadcast on Somoy TV drives home this uncomfortable truth. See above. The red arrow identifies none other than Ko Ko Linn, the head of the RSO, while the green arrow zeroes in on Ayoub, a senior commander. Sitting squarely between them is Shah Jahan, Joint Director of Bangladesh’s National Security Intelligence in Cox’s Bazar. It is an image that calls into question every stern announcement, every supposed crackdown, and every press conference in which the RSO’s activities were denounced.
This is the same RSO that Bangladesh used to uproot the Rohingya community living in No Man’s Land back in January 2023. Just a month later, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence denounced the RSO as “one of eleven criminal gangs operating in the camps!
In May 2023, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal went further, declaring that ARSA, RSO and ARA would not be allowed to infiltrate refugee camps and that the army might be called in to deal with them. Listen to him in the video above. (He stumbles at one point - first referring to a group as “Arakan Army” before hurriedly correcting himself to “RA,” presumably meaning the Arakan Rohingya Army (ARA)).
By May 2024, all that storm and fury was forgotten. When ex-Foreign Minister A K Momen and ex-Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid visited the camps with the Standing Committee on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, RSO leaders, including Ko Ko Linn, were seated in the front row, side by side with political bigwigs. So much for the tough talk.