THE Rohingya influx into Bangladesh keeps taking place slowly as they flee violence and a fearful situation in their native place of Rakhine, which is reported for long to have been caught in conflicts. The Office of the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner says that 53,948 Rohingyas were given registration by the office at hand and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for their stay in camps at Ukhiya and Teknaf in Cox鈥檚 Bazar, with most of the Rohingyas reported to have taken shelter in August and September that year. Data available with the Office of the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner further show that 116 Rohingyas were registered for stay in the camps in January and 40 in February this year. There are now 34 camps for the Rohingyas in Cox鈥檚 Bazar and at Bhashan Char in Noakhali, where the government began relocating the Rohingya population in December 2020 with a better life and to reduce the pressure on the camps. The Border Guard Bangladesh says that its personnel sent back more than 15,000 Rohingyas, trying to enter Bangladesh between May 2024 and February 2025.
What also remains worrying is that a number of Rohingyas who have crossed into Bangladesh have said that they needed to spend about two million Myanmar kyats, equivalent to Tk 116,000, to people to cross the border into Bangladesh. They are reported to have paid most of the money to the Arakan Army and the rest to the boat operators and brokers. Border Guard Bangladesh officials, however, claim that they have not heard of money being paid to the Arakan Army, boat operators and brokers, but Armed Police Battalion officials say that they have heard of the matter from people who live in the Rohingya camps. This suggests the presence of rackets composed of people of both Myanmar and Bangladesh who work along the border to help the Rohingyas in distress to cross into Bangladesh. This has come up as an issue that has been left unattended. And, the situation warrants that the border guards of Bangladesh should bust the rackets to stop any fresh influx of the Rohingyas because the continued influx only adds to the gravity of the situation and the hardship that the Rohingyas are living in camps with. The United Nations has announced a reduction in the monthly food aid, from $12.5 to $6 per person for more than a million of the Rohingyas beginning on April 1.
In the backdrop of all earlier Rohingya repatriation attempts having failed, the world community, especially the United Nations, should work on the issue with the earnestness that would work.