Yunus, Doha & the Rohingya Repatriation Performance

Dr Muhammad Yunus in Doha, Qatar. 23rd April 2025. Source: Facebook page of Chief Adviser, Government of Bangladesh.

Yesterday, a short, emotional video was screened in Doha, Qatar, at a high-level roundtable on Rohingya refugees. It features a young Rohingya girl, Marzida, born in the camps of Bangladesh, addressing Professor Muhammad Yunus and Sheikha Hind (Qatar Foundation’s powerhouse philanthropist) directly.

The Film

In English, she recounts the stories her mother has told her of their homeland — of life in Arakan before they fled, of persecution, of longing. Her mother, Monowara Begum, speaks in Rohingya, describing a life of abundance lost, a husband and children dead, and a yearning to return to what she calls her own country.

There is sorrow. There is nostalgia. There is orchestral music. It is heartbreaking. The credits roll in Doha’s Mandarin Oriental ballroom. But it is also political performance.

It is a strategically curated narrative — one designed to centre repatriation as the only horizon of hope. And in doing so, it obscures the deeper truth: that repatriation, right now, is a non-starter. The man who shared the video, Muhammad Yunus — Nobel laureate and now Chief Adviser of Bangladesh’s interim government — knows this. He knows the Arakan Army dominates Rakhine. He knows there is no pathway to citizenship for the Rohingya. He knows the camps are warehouses for people who are denied rights in both countries.

Nevertheless, with evocative music, wistful memories, and an emphasis on homeland and return, it presents an aestheticised and sanitised story of longing that glosses over the hard truths of current realities.

I’d be willing to bet that the real auteur behind the video is none other than Mizanur Rahman, the RRRC chief. The script echoes his routine talking points - every line a remix of the sermons he delivers whenever he tours the camps. The wording also drips with his signature menace: the mother’s line about her husband and two children dying “for lack of care in Bangladesh - back home I could’ve sold land and saved them” is a warning from Mizan but shrouded in pathos: stay here and you perish.

Incidentally, he has a soft spot for cinema; he’s told me more than once how fond he was of the Bihari documentary I made with Tanvir Mokammel. If memory serves, he even dabbled in a bit of scriptwriting/writing himself. The fingerprints are hard to miss.

The Missing Facts

The video hinges on nostalgia and generational memory - a daughter absorbing stories from her mother about a lost home in Arakan. This framing has one purpose: to instrumentalise grief and longing to create a romanticised image of repatriation. It entirely bypasses the structural, political, and security realities on the ground in Rakhine today — especially the dominance of the Arakan Army, the continued statelessness of Rohingya, and the lack of any credible guarantee of rights or safety.

“It is heartbreaking. But it is also political performance.”

The video treats violence as something static and in the past. There is no reference to current military operations, no mention of how the conditions that led to the 2017 genocide have not only persisted but in many ways worsened. By silencing these facts, the video depoliticises the conversation about return and turns repatriation into an emotional inevitability rather than a contested and dangerous policy.

Why Yunus Needs the Clip

The fact that this was shared by Dr Muhammad Yunus, Bangladesh’s Chief Adviser, and screened at a high-level summit in Doha, is itself telling. It suggests that repatriation is being rebranded as a moral imperative, backed by selectively curated narratives — while the actual conditions, as I keep saying, for a safe, voluntary, and dignified return remain entirely absent.

But we should know that Yunus isn’t trying to clear the camps. He is managing the appearance of moral action. By speaking the language of return, he plays the role of humanitarian statesman. And crucially, he keeps donor money flowing.

This is the logic of the aid-industrial complex. It doesn’t rely on solutions. It thrives on the performance of compassion. I unpack this ‘aid-industrial complex’ in my Himal Southasian piece.

Even Médecins Sans Frontières, hardly a radical outfit, now warns that the camps are “containment by design.” In its 2024 Behind the Wire report MSF concludes that no surge of donations can fix a system built to confine. Unless Rohingya get freedom of movement, the right to work and a pathway to citizenship, humanitarian budgets will keep lubricating the cage rather than opening it (be it in Myanmar or Bangladesh or wherever Rohingya are). To quote the report “At present, we see a dire lack of solutions and a multiplication of systems designed to contain the Rohingya in abject destitution.”

What was Yunus really doing in Doha?

In essence, Yunus was trying to reboot an eight-year refugee stalemate by draping it in fresh Qatari financing. Doha controls three kinds of leverage.

First, the chequebook: Qatar Charity and the Qatar Fund already bankroll shelter blocks, LPG cylinders and a showcase “livelihood farm” on Bhasan Char, giving the emirate a glossy humanitarian logo in every press shot.

Second, Gulf soft-power: as the wealthiest member of the OIC, Qatar can shake the donation tree whenever UN appeals stall. Yunus’s speech was a public plea for exactly that—“rally the Muslim world, top up the coffers.”

Third, the back-channel: Qatari diplomats maintain polite energy-and-ports conversations with both Naypyidaw and Beijing. Dhaka hopes the same envoys can whisper “repatriation” into the junta’s ear.

That’s why Marzida addresses Sheikha Hind by name. As vice-chair of Qatar Foundation she signs off on the emirate’s feel-good projects; tugging her heart-strings is a fast-track to more cash and louder moral posturing. The video isn’t at all about a child’s dream of going home - it’s about securing the next funding cycle and keeping the warehouse running

That’s what the Doha video is. A performance. A sentimental package aimed at international audiences, carefully edited to stir hearts — not to confront facts. It sidesteps the Rohingya’s statelessness, the coercion inside the camps, and the collusion between Bangladesh’s security forces and armed proxies. It avoids all the harder questions.

“Containtment by design”

Yunus, in many ways, is just the latest actor in a decades-long play. One where Bangladesh hosts but never integrates. One where donors fund but never reform. One where the world speaks of Rohingya suffering — but never of Rohingya rights and agency. The Rohingya remain stateless, workless, and rightsless cheap labour for Cox’s Bazar builds and an expendable crew for Andaman smuggling routes.

Instead, the video offers a simple storyline: “We want to go home. Help us.”

And who could refuse such a child?

But here's the reality. Repatriation cannot be based on feeling. It must be rooted in rights. In safety. And in justice.

Until those things exist — until Myanmar recognises the Rohingya as citizens, until international actors hold perpetrators accountable — this kind of messaging does more harm than good. It gives the illusion that return is around the corner. That all we need is willpower, when what’s missing is structural change.

And so we are left with videos like this one. Poignant but politically empty.