Social System Breakdown of Bangladesh Due to Rohingya Crisis: In Search for Possible Solution

Abstract

Rohingya Muslims are the ethnic minority in Myanmar who originally lived in the western state of Rakhine. Of all the world’s total refugees, 10% live in Myanmar, and they are members of the Rohingya community. The United Nations welcomed political and economic reforms of Myanmar in 2014 even while expressing concerns over the Rohingya’s affliction, but the government is yet to let the Rohingya people get immunity from illegal immigration. Conversely, the government has been illegally proclaiming the Rohingyas as infiltrators from Bangladesh. Owing to the hostility and aggression of the government, the people of Rohingya community have been migrating to Bangladesh since a long time for the sake of life and property. In 2012, the conflict between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims cost several lives, and fearing the risk to their life, the Rohingya people fled to Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia subsequently. On October 9, 2016, Rohingya armed insurgents attacked border security checkpoints in Myanmar and killed several policemen; again, on August 25, 2017, they assaulted Myanmar’s security forces. As a result, Myanmar security forces started the abduction of Rohingya Muslims, mainly in Rakhine state in the name of anti-terrorism operations. According to multiple human rights organizations, the security forces carried out extrajudicial killings and set fire to their property in Rakhine state. Consequently, the Rohingya Muslims moved to Bangladesh to find safe shelters, and the government of Bangladesh opened the border on humanitarian grounds. Thousands of them took shelter in permanent and temporary refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, the southeast border area of Bangladesh. Due to the limitations of Bangladesh’s national resources and the aggressive manner in which Rohingyas wanted to spread across Bangladesh, there was anticipation and fear of extreme deterioration of the social system of Cox’s Bazar and hill tracks. While managing the massive 1.3 million Rohingya refugees, social and indigenous life of the Hill Tracks is endangered, and there is downfall of the environment of Cox’s Bazar, tremendous threat to wildlife, threat to internal rustic security, and even the emergence of militancy in Bangladesh.