Around 8,000 Rohingyas have recently crossed into Bangladesh, fleeing armed conflict in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, Foreign Affairs Adviser Md Touhid Hossain said today.
“I have information that around 8,000 Rohingyas have entered Bangladesh. We will have a serious discussion at the cabinet within the next 2-3 days (regarding this),” he told reporters at the foreign ministry this afternoon.
The adviser said that Bangladesh has decided, in principle, not to shelter any more forcibly displaced Rohingyas.
While expressing sympathy for the persecuted Rohingya, he stressed that Bangladesh no longer has the capacity to provide humanitarian shelter to additional refugees.
Hossain noted that the border with Myanmar has been sealed, but acknowledged the difficulty of completely securing the frontier.
“It is not fully possible to seal the border,” he said, however, adding that the government will make efforts to prevent further entry of Rohingyas.
The foreign adviser said that he will have a meeting with the home affairs adviser in the next two days to discuss measures.
Addressing questions on repatriation, Hossain suggested the need for a communication channel with the Arakan Army, the rebel group that currently controls most of Rakhine state, to facilitate the return of the Rohingyas.
“I think this is the way forward, but we have to assess how much can be done at the state level,” he said.
Since August 25 in 2017, Bangladesh has been hosting over million forcefully displaced Rohingyas in Cox’s Bazar district and most of them arrived there after a military crackdown by Myanmar, which the UN called a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” and other rights groups dubbed it as “genocide”.
In the last seven years, not a single Rohingya went back home.
Myanmar agreed to take them back, but repatriation attempts failed twice due to trust deficit among the Rohingyas about their safety and security in Rakhine state.
