Press Release
Bangladesh Regime Recreating Myanmar’s Persecution of the Rohingya Muslims to Force their Return to the Hands of their Killers

On the 11^th May, Human Rights Watch reported that Bangladesh police had beaten a number of Rohingya refugees at a checkpoint, including a 62-year-old female refugee who was returning to her shelter in the Kutupalong Refugee Camp after collecting food rations. She reported that police officers from Bangladesh Armed Police Battalion beat her and other Rohingya with a bamboo stick. She was injured in the incident and lost her food rations. This reprehensible event occurred in the wake of the Bangladesh authority’s introduction of a draconian permission application for movement within two refugee camps which a number of Rohingya described as mirroring the repressive conditions they faced at the hands of the brutal anti-Muslim regime in Myanmar. Furthermore, in the days following Eid, 656 Rohingya in the Cox’s Bazar District, including women and children, were detained for leaving their ‘prison-like’ refugee camps to celebrate Eid ul Fitr at a nearby beach. Other Rohingya have reported that they were beaten by police when they tried to access critical medicine for their parents by visiting a pharmacy outside their camp.

These incidents are part of the Bangladesh regime’s increasing efforts to restrict the movement of Rohingya Muslims in the country as well as their access to employment and education in the camps. According to Human Rights Watch, in recent months, authorities have arbitrarily destroyed more than 3000 shops in the Rohingya camps, and subsequently refused these vulnerable Muslims the right to run another business. In December 2021, the regime banned Rohingya-led community schools and closed down madrasas that provide Islamic education, affecting 60,000 students, and depriving Rohingya children from any form of decent education. They also threatened to confiscate identity documents from any Rohingya who violates this ban, which would result in being denied access to essential aid and services and being forcibly relocated to the flood-prone remote island of Bhasan Char.

This intensified harassment of Rohingya Muslims by the Bangladesh regime is part of its continuing agenda to create such unbearable living conditions and scale of persecution such that these vulnerable refugees are coerced into either relocating to Bhasan Char where Rohingya have faced food and medicine shortages and abuses by security forces, or to return to the killing fields of Myanmar. In December 2021, Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister, Dr. AKM Abdul Momen stated that the “early repatriation of the Rohingyas to Myanmar is our lead priority,” while this January, Bangladesh officials held the first meeting of a new taskforce formed with Myanmar junta officials, which announced plans to expedite the return of Rohingya refugees to Myanmar. Not only has this despicable Bangladesh regime denied the Rohingya Muslims any legal status in the country or a basic level of living, it has actively worked to create the most atrocious conditions in the refugee camps to force the Rohingya to return into the hands of those who executed a genocide against them. It lacks any ounce of compassion, humanity or regard towards Islam which states that Muslims are brothers towards one another, with an obligation to protect, support and grant dignified sanctuary to one another when in need.

Allah (swt) says:[وَإِنِ اسْتَنصَرُوكُمْ فِي الدِّينِ فَعَلَيْكُمُ النَّصْرُ]“And if they seek help of you for the religion, then you must help.” [8:72].

And the Prophet (saw) said: «الْمُسْلِمُ أَخُو الْمُسْلِمِ لَا يَظْلِمُهُ وَلَا يَخْذُلُهُ» “A Muslim is the brother of a Muslim: he does not oppress him, nor does he abandon him.” The criminal Hasina regime declares its war on Islam and Muslims like the rulers of Muslim lands, such as Malaysia and Indonesia who have also consistently pushed these helpless refugees away from their shores to die at sea, or subjected them to unbearable living conditions in their countries. The agent regimes who rule over the Muslim lands and who have abandoned oppressed Muslims, need to be removed with urgency, and on their ruins, the Khilafah (Caliphate) State based upon the method of the Prophethood needs to be established which would give refuge, sanctuary and a dignified life to all oppressed Muslims as well as guarantee all their rights as full citizens of the state as obligated by Islam. Without the establishment of this state, the suffering of the Muslims will never end!

Dr. Nazreen Nawaz
Director of the Women’s Section in The Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir