SALEEM SAMADThree significant developments have occurred in a week which once again brought the much-talked-about Rohingya refugee crisis to the global media.
First, last week United Nations Secretary General António Guterres visited the Rohingya refugees living in squalid camps in south-east Bangladesh. Besides Bangladesh, Rohingyas are languishing in camps in India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. The majoritarian Rohingyas are camped in Bangladesh.
Amid aid cuts, the Secretary-General emphasized that the international community cannot turn its back on the Rohingya crisis. “We cannot accept that the international community forgets about the Rohingyas,” he said, adding that he will “speak loudly” to world leaders that more support is urgently needed.
UN aid efforts in Rohingya camps are in jeopardy following reductions of funds announced by major donors, including the United States and several European nations. Guterres described Cox’s Bazar (where the Rohingya camps are situated) as “ground zero” for the impact of these cuts, warning of a looming humanitarian disaster if immediate action is not taken.
The visiting guest joined with the Rohingya for Iftar (not on the same menu as the refugees). The overwhelming majority of Rohingyas are Muslim, among an estimated 1.2 million refugees. A small number are Hindus and Christians. The Secretary-General could not promise how he would augment food aid and the deadline for the safe and sustainable return of the refugees to Myanmar.
Despite being a poor country, Bangladesh is hosting over one million Rohingya refugees who fled violence in neighboring Myanmar. The largest exodus followed brutal attacks by Tatmadaw (Myanmar security forces) in 2017. A series of dreadful events prompted the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to describe the atrocities as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”
Myanmar military junta under General Min Aung Hlaing who has ruled Myanmar as the State Administration Council (SAC) chairman since seizing power in the February 2021 coup d’état overthrowing the elected government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.
Hlaing refuses to hold parley with the United Nations officials and does not speak with Bangladesh. Also has imposed restrictions on international NGOs and aid agencies. Such arrogance became visible after the United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, led by Marzuki Darusman, said that Min Aung Hlaing, along with four other Generals (Soe Win, Aung Kyaw Zaw, Maung Maung Soe, and Than Oo) should be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity (including genocide) in the International Criminal Court (ICC), at The Hague, The Netherlands.
Recently, the Rakhine state, 36,762 square kilometers (14,194 sq mi) bordering Bangladesh has been overrun by battle-hardened Arakan Army (AA) guerillas. The AA dashed all hopes for the repartition of Rohingyas when the guerilla headquarters issued an official statement extending an olive branch to hold dialogue with Bangladesh authorities but on one condition. The agenda for discussion should not include the return of Bengali Muslims (which means Rohingya).
However, AA urges to continue trade and commerce, border security, and a few other bilateral issues. Bangladesh deliberately did not respond. Dhaka does not recognize ethnic military command to be a legitimate authority to hold official talks. Myanmar military junta and the rebels have similar mindsets identifying the Rohingyas as “Bengali Muslims” who have been blamed for illegally migrating from neighboring Bangladesh since a century ago.
The draconian Citizenship Law of 1982 requires individuals to prove that their ancestors lived in Myanmar before 1823, refuse to recognize Rohingya Muslims as one of the nation’s ethnic groups and delist their language as a national language.
Bangladesh has earlier raised the refugee crisis at several international platforms including the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the Commonwealth, the United Nations, and other global summits. Despite limited or no contributions for the ‘stateless’ Rohingya, instead the world Muslim countries lauded Bangladesh for providing food and shelter to them.
Unfortunately, several attempts to repatriate the refugees fell flat in 2018 and 2019. Instead, Bangladesh blames the intransigent policy of Suu Kyi’s government, which was ousted by military leaders and placed her under house arrest in February 2021. Academicians and researchers on forced migration and the refugee crisis are convinced that there is no light at the end of the tunnel.
Second, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) warns of a critical funding shortfall for its emergency response operations in Bangladesh, jeopardizing food assistance for over one million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.
Without urgent new funding, monthly rations will be halved to US$6 per person, down from US$12.50 per person – just as refugees were preparing to observe Eid, the biggest Muslim festival at the end of Ramadan at the end of this month. To sustain full rations, WFP urgently requires US$15 million for April, and US$81 million until the end of 2025.
In recent months, as conflicts in Rakhine state were at the peak between AA and the junta’s soldiers, fresh waves of Rohingya refugees exceeding 100,000 have crossed into Bangladesh. The continued trickle of Rohingya seeking safety has further contributed to greater strain on already overstretched resources.
Bangladesh’s government for decades refused to recognize the Rohingya as “refugees”, in an excuse that the government has not signed the Convention on the Status of Refugees of 1951.
For a million population with no legal status, no freedom of movement outside the camps, confined inside barbed wires and no sustainable livelihood opportunities, further cuts will exacerbate protection and security risks, says the UN agency.
The vulnerability is likely to heighten risks of exploitation, trafficking, prostitution, and domestic violence among women and girls. Children are expected to drop out of learning schools and be forced into child labor. There will be a spike in child brides as families resort to desperate measures to survive on meager rations.
Third, on the day when Fortify Rights released its 78-page research report, “I May Be Killed Any Moment: Killings, Abductions, Torture, and Other Serious Violations by Rohingya Militant Groups in Bangladesh” in Dhaka, the special security forces nabbed the Islamic jihadist Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) supremo Ataullah Abu Ammar Jununi, commonly known as Ataullah near the capital Dhaka on 18 March without a firefight.
Fortify Rights, an international human rights investigation NGO, recommends that the Government of Bangladesh and international justice mechanisms – including the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar and the ICC – investigate Rohingya militant organizations operational in the refugee camps in Bangladesh and prosecute those responsible for war crimes.
Such specific Intel in capturing Ataullah must have been shared by Pakistan’s military establishment in Rawalpindi. International media has been blaming Pakistan’s spy agency ISI for recruitment, training and funding for ARSA.
Indian security agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) has kept ARSA under strict surveillance. Monitoring their leader’s sleeper cell, monetary exchanges, and their covert activities.
ARSA first came into the limelight in August 2017 after the jihadist overran several Myanmar’s Border Guards Forces outposts along Bangladesh-Myanmar international borders. After the firefight, ARSA fell back to Bangladesh’s no-man’s-land, which is covered by hill forests and scores of streams.
Earlier, Bangladesh, Myanmar and India refused to accept ARSA as a jihadist outfit. The militant group was described as ‘Rohingya Muslim vigilantes’ with a limited ordinance and disorganized, therefore nothing to be worried about was in their mind.
ARSA’s attacks sparked Tatmadaw’s (Myanmar military) to commit a brutal genocidal campaign against Rohingya Muslims. The troops torched hundreds of villages and went on a rampage for months despite international calls to cease brutality against the Rohingyas.
The Naypyidaw labeled ARSA as an “extremist Bengali terrorists, also Rohingya Muslim terrorists,” warning that its goal is to establish an Islamic state in the Rakhine state. Such an ambitious objective will be difficult to implement in a Buddhist-majority region.
Myanmar blames Pakistan’s dreaded Pakistan’s spy agency ISI for its share in mentoring the jihadist outfit. Their theory that ARSA has been raised, funded, and provides logistics and indoctrination was masterminded by ISI and is also believed by both Bangladesh and India.
Simultaneously, India became worried about the presence of the jihadist outfit at the border of Bangladesh-Myanmar-India. The skirmish with Myanmar troops has also raised the eyebrows of Bangladesh and expressed alarm on the visible presence of ARSA in its territory.
The ARSA militants were mostly recruited from the Rohingya refugees. It was not to anybody’s surprise that the leadership was Pakistan-born Saudi émigrés. They raise funds mostly from Rohingyas living in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Several years ago, in a rare interview with an international media, Ataullah, chief of ARSA said that their objective would be “open war” and “continued [armed] resistance” against the Myanmar government until “citizenship rights were reinstated” of Rohingyas in Myanmar.
The jihadist leader denied having links to the Islamic State or ISIS in a video and said he turned his back on support from Pakistan-based jihadists. The Bangladesh security agencies were skeptical of his claim.
A security expert in Bangladesh explains that ARSA has ideological differences from other terror outfits in the region and has reason to distance itself from the transnational jihadist network.
ARSA operatives are responsible for widespread abduction, extortions, tortures and executions of suspects. The crimes are committed to collect funds for local operations in the world’s largest Rohingya camps, says Fortify Rights in their latest report.
Cash-starved Al Yakin, the volunteer group of ARSA is mostly responsible for gang war in the refugee camps to establish dominance over other non-militant groups in the sprawling camps.
Often breaking news from Rohingya refugee camps of robbers, dacoits, and armed gangs killed in encounters by anti-crime forces – the slain victims are radicalized Rohingya militants.
Fortify Rights urges that Bangladesh should hold the Rohingya militants accountable for war crimes. Bangladesh’s Interim Government should cooperate with international justice mechanisms to investigate crimes and bring potential war criminals to justice.
Donor governments should work with Bangladesh to redouble services for Rohingya at risk, including protective spaces and third-country resettlement, said Fortify Rights.
In an interview that aired on 4 March 2025, the head of Bangladesh Interim Government, Prof Muhammad Yunus, spoke about violence in the refugee camps, saying: “There is lots of violence, lots of drugs, lots of paramilitary activities inside the camps.”
“War crimes are usually committed within the immediate theater of armed conflict but, in this case, specific crimes in Bangladesh are directly connected to the war in Myanmar and constitute war crimes,” says John Quinley, Director at Fortify Rights.
Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh have suffered years of violence and killings at the hands of Rohingya militant groups. Reported killings by camp-based militants numbered 22 in 2021, 42 in 2022, 90 in 2023, and at least 65 in 2024.
The majority of the killings by Rohingya militants documented by Fortify Rights occurred with impunity in the camps, creating a climate of fear for all camp residents, said Fortify Rights.
ARSA and a rival Islamist militant outfit, the Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) are engaged in Myanmar’s internal armed conflict. They are both fighting with the Myanmar junta and against the Arakan Army, with very little impact militarily.
To reinforce their armed campaigns inside Myanmar, ARSA, and RSO have abducted refugees in Bangladesh and forced them to fight in Myanmar. Such acts are grave violations of the laws of war and should be investigated as possible war crimes.
The ICC has already established jurisdiction and opened an investigation into cross-border atrocity crimes occurring against Rohingya in both Bangladesh and Myanmar. This should include crimes committed by ARSA and similar groups, said Fortify Rights.
In 2019, the British-born ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Ahmad Khan at the time said the court was “aware of a number of acts of violence allegedly committed by ARSA,” noting that the allegations would be kept “under review.”
First published in the Stratheia Policy Journal, Islamabad, Pakistan on 23 March 2025
Saleem Samad is an award-winning independent journalist based in Bangladesh. A media rights defender with the Reporters Without Borders (@RSF_inter). Recipient of Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. He could be reached at saleemsamad@hotmail.com; Twitter (X): @saleemsamad
