According to Foreign Affairs Adviser Md. Touhid Hossain, some 8,000 Rohingyas have lately entered Bangladesh after escaping the ongoing turmoil in Myanmar’s Rakhine condition.
“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 advisor stated that Bangladesh has made the decision to stop providing sanctuary to any further Rohingyas who have been forcibly expelled.
He said that although he sympathized with the Rohingya, Bangladesh can no longer take in any more refugees and still offer them humanitarian protection.
Hossain stated that although the border with Myanmar has been blocked, full border security is a challenging task.
“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 home affairs adviser and the foreign advisor will meet in the next two days to consider potential steps, according to the foreign adviser.
In response to inquiries on repatriation, Hossain proposed that in order to enable the Rohingyas’ return, there should be a channel of communication open to the Arakan Army, the rebel group now in charge of the majority of Rakhine state.
“I think this is the way forward, but we have to assess how much can be done at the state level,” he said.
In the Cox’s Bazar district of Bangladesh, over a million Rohingyas have been forcibly displaced since August 25, 2017. The majority of these refugees arrived following a military crackdown by Myanmar, which the UN referred to as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” and other rights groups as “genocide.”
Never once have any Rohingya returned home in the past seven years.
Although Myanmar consented to return them, two attempts at repatriation failed because the Rohingyas did not trust that they would be safe and secure in Rakhine state.
