It is widely known that the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army’s attacks on Myanmar border guard posts in 2016 and 2017, and the Myanmar military’s clearance operations in response, resulted in a large number of Rohingya—estimated at 800,000 in total—crossing the border into Bangladesh’s southeastern border zone.
The Bangladesh government came up with a plan to relocate some of the refugees to an island (Char) in the Bay of Bengal. This plan has been the subject of much debate both within and outside Bangladesh.
To date, the Bangladesh government maintains that its sheltering of Rohingyas in the country is temporary and that the refugees’ return to Myanmar is the only solution. However, the relocation plan seems to contradict the Bangladesh government’s position. If so, has Bangladesh made a major policy shift from return (“repatriation” from the Bangladesh government’s point of view) to settlement of the Rohingya?
This essay attempts to answer this question through a detailed examination of the “Char relocation.”
Moreover, conventional discussions on the “Rohingya issue” have tended to focus exclusively on the Rohingya as victims while neglecting the host government and people of Bangladesh. This essay will address this point as well.
