Rohingya Camp Narratives

This book presents thirteen chapters which probe the “tales less told” and “pathways less traveled” in refugee camp living. Rohingya camps in Bangladesh since August 2017 supply these “tales” and “pathways”. They dwell upon/reflect camp violence, sexual/gender discrimination, intersectionality, justice, the sudden COVID camp entry, human security, children education, innovation, and relocation plans. Built largely upon field trips, these narratives interestingly interweave with both theoretical threads (hypotheses) and tapestries (net-effects), feeding into the security-driven pulls of political realism, or disseminating from humanitarian-driven socioeconomic pushes, but mostly combining them. Post-ethnic cleansing and post-exodus windows open up a murky future for Rohingya and global refugees. We learn of positive offshoots (of camp innovations exposing civil society relevance) and negative (like human and sex trafficking beyond Bangladeshi and Myanmar borders), as of navigating (a) local–global linkages of every dynamic and (b) fast-moving current circumstances against stoic historical leftovers.

Although international attention on the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh has waned, the challenges have not. This theoretically informed and empirically rich volume explores the social, economic, political, environmental, and security implications of nearly one million refugees. Policymakers, advocates, and researchers should read this book. -Geoffrey Macdonald, Ph.D., Bangladesh Country Director, International Republican Institute, Bangladesh This book presents thirteen chapters which probe the "tales less told" and "pathways less traveled" in refugee camp living. Rohingya camps in Bangladesh since August 2017 supply these "tales" and "pathways". They dwell upon/reflect camp violence, sexual/gender discrimination, intersectionality, justice, the sudden COVID camp entry, human security, children education, innovation, and relocation plans. Built largely upon field trips, these narratives interestingly interweave with both theoretical threads (hypotheses) and tapestries (net-effects), feeding into the security-driven pulls of political realism, or disseminating from humanitarian-driven socioeconomic pushes, but mostly combining them. Post-ethnic cleansing and post-exodus windows open up a murky future for Rohingya and global refugees. We learn of positive offshoots (of camp innovations exposing civil society relevance) and negative (like human and sex trafficking beyond Bangladeshi and Myanmar borders), as of navigating (a) local-global linkages of every dynamic and (b) fast-moving current circumstances against stoic historical leftovers. Imtiaz A. Hussain founded the Global Studies & Governance Department at Independent University, Bangladesh (2016), after creating/teaching International Relations/Global Studies/Governance courses in Philadelphia University/ Universidad Iberoamericana (1990-2014). He has published over 20 books (South Asia in Global Power Rivalry, Transatlantic Transactions; North American Regionalism; Evaluating NAFTA; Border Governance and the 'Unruly' South, and Afghanistan-Iraq and Post-conflict Governance), articles (Encyclopedia of U.S.-Latin American Relations, Handbook of Global Security and Intelligence, South Asian Survey, Politics & Policy, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, Norteamérica, & Journal of International Relations), and has contributed to Bangladesh's newspapers such as Daily Star and Financial Express. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania (1989).

This book provides a critical analysis of the Rohingya refugees’ identity building processes and how this is closely linked to the state-building process of Myanmar as well as issues of marginalization, statelessness, forced migration, exile life, and resistance of an ethnic minority. With a focus on the ethnic minority’s life at the Myanmar-Bangladesh border, the author demonstrates how the state itself is involved in the construction of identity, which it manipulates for its own political purposes. The study is based on original research, largely drawn from fieldwork data. It presents an alternative and endogenous interpretation of the problem in contrast to the exogenous narrative espoused by state institutions, non-governmental organizations, and the media.

The 2017 persecution of the Rohingyas resulted in around a million Rohingyas fleeing to Bangladesh, India and Malaysia. This book investigates the complex challenges of managing the large-scale refugee exodus in Bangladesh and how best to resolve these challenges in the future. Using a mixed-method approach that includes a survey, key informant interviews and numerous short case studies of persecution, the authors also examine the problematic influence of the media, as local depictions of Rohingya refugees often caused further tension and division in the midst of the refugee crisis. The book’s analysis offers a deeper understanding of the causes and drivers of identity-based politics among Myanmar’s Rohingya.

The present publication has been conceived as a critical reflection, in different disciplinary fields, on the social, institutional, and cultural impact of the recent COVID-19 pandemic in Asia and Africa. The issues presented here were first discussed as part of a larger research project at two conferences, held in Rome in June and October 2022. After extensive revision, these results have now been collected as fully developed articles in the current two volumes: the first focuses on the cultural, artistic, and media-related facets of the pandemic; the second on its social and institutional implications. This Volume I examines the effects of the traumatic events brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic on various cultural phenomena, artistic expressions, and social media communication, analysing among other themes the creation of new narratives and the modalities of personal and collective responses. The articles cover vast geographical areas, spanning from the Middle East to the Indian Subcontinent and East Asia, and aim at making their multiple visions converge in one compact perspective of empathic connection.

Survivor: My Life as a Rohingya Refugee tells by Ziaur Rahman from his own perspective, start from a moment his family fled to the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, where he was brought up until he was kidnapped and trafficked to Malaysia via Thailand. The story represents the hardship that many Rohingya have undergone, lacking access to basic resources such as food and medicine, as well as being exploited and abused by the camp guards in Bangladesh and wider Bangladeshi society as a whole. Yet on reaching Malaysia he tells the story of how this suffering has continued, and how with his wife and children he has struggled to build a future for himself and his family, within a system that doesn’t care for Rohingya refugees. Ziaur Rahman’s story is also, paradoxically, a story of hope. In the camps in Bangladesh, he dedicated himself to his education and other training programmes with the vision of one day helping his community to improve. When in Malaysia he devoted himself to activism, to help Rohingya refugees access services and to protect them from abuse. In doing so he worked with the UNHCR and other NGOs in the country, even meeting the prime minister in the process and becoming the subject of a documentary film Selfie with The Prime Minister (2017). By doing so, Ziaur Rahman, whilst facing his own hardships and struggling to make a living locally, has done great service to the Rohingya community in Malaysia and around the world, raising the consciousness of the world to the suffering of refugees in host countries, as well as the ongoing atrocities against the Rohingya in Myanmar. Today there are around 100,000 UNHCR-registered Rohingya refugees in Malaysia. Such numbers have been produced by the long history of violent marginalisation of the Rohingya people of Arakan state in Myanmar, as well as the hostile conditions they have found in the refugee camps in Bangladesh which they have fled to. Rohingya refugees have been leaving Bangladesh for countries such as Malaysia in significant numbers from the 1990s onwards. But these numbers increased considerably in the aftermath of a new wave of state violence against the Rohingya in 2012, in a conflict where state forces unleashed a wave of rioting, looting, arson, rape and violence on the Rohingya, leading to a new wave of refugees into nearby countries, particularly Bangladesh, but also to Malaysia via Thailand. The preference of Rohingya refugees for Malaysia lies in the fact that it is a developing and Muslim-majority country, and a country that has regularly spoken up about the sufferings of the Rohingya in Myanmar. The journey to Malaysia and the reception that Rohingya refugees receive, however, is a continuation of the exclusion and violence they are subjected to in their home country. To reach Malaysia many refugees are trafficked aboard boats and then ransomed by traffickers for large amounts of money which they or their families have to pay. These traffickers have often used the border between Thailand and Malaysia as a transit point to hold refugees and move them into Malaysia, in a journey that Ziaur Rahman harrowingly describes in this book. A journey in which refugees risk their lives and undergo horrific forms of treatment and abuse by traffickers, Others have tried to make it to Malaysia directly, undertaking a dangerous journey by sea to escape the violence of life in Myanmar, but have often had their boats pushed back by Malaysian authorities, This has again occurred in recent months during the COVID-19 crisis, as Malaysten forces have refused entry to boats carrying Rohingya refugees, and the refugees have bad to return to Bangladesh. Those Rohingya lucky to make it to Malaysia find, however, that they are far from welcome. Malaysia is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees and does not recognise refugees within its borders or provide protection to them, Thus whilst Malaysia does provide (temporary) shelter for Rohingya communities, these communities continue to be at risk of arrest, detention and extortion by state officials, as well as suffering labour exploitation in the informal labour sector, and they lack access to healthcare as well as education. This fact has become increasingly evident in the wake of the global COVID-19 crisis, with Rohingya refugees in Malaysia struggling to access food and basic services as the country’s economy closed down and with them unable to access state-based relief. At the same time, the Rohingya in Malaysia have increasingly been subjected to scapegoating by elements of the Malaysian population, fuelled their presence in the country and the help they are said to receive from the UNHCR. Today the status of the Rohingya in Malaysia is increasingly precarious and dangerous, but this is only a continuation of decades of insecurity and precarity that the Rohingyas have faced in Malaysia, as well as other countries in the region.

This book offers a comprehensive depiction of the causes and consequences of the Rohingya crisis, based on detailed ethnographic narratives provided by hundreds of Rohingya people who crossed the border following the Clearance Operation in 2017. The author critically engages with the identity politics on both sides of the border between Bangladesh and Myanmar, and the categorisation of the Rohingya as the people of ‘no-man’s land’ amidst the socio-political and ethno-nationalist dynamics of colonial and postcolonial transition in the region. He then interrogates the role of the international community and aid industry, before providing in-depth policy recommendations based on his own experience working with Rohingya refugees. The book will be of interest to students, scholars, policymakers and NGOs in the fields of migration studies, anthropology, political science and international relations.