Bangladesh will not let in any more Rohingya refugees

DHAKA: Bangladesh said on Wednesday it will not allow any more Rohingya refugees from Myanmar to enter the country because supporting the huge numbers already there threatens its own security.

Muslim Rohingya have faced persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar for decades and nearly a million of them live in crammed, bamboo-and-plastic camps in Bangladesh’s border district of Cox’s Bazar; most fled a military crackdown in 2017.

Myanmar’s military rulers view the Rohingya as foreign interlopers and have denied them citizenship, leaving Bangladesh with little prospect of repatriating them over the border to Rakhine from the world’s largest refugee settlement. “We will not allow any more Rohingya to enter the country... they have already become a burden for us,” Obaidul Quader, the minister for road transport and bridges, told reporters on Wednesday.

“International aid has been significantly reduced. How long can we support them?”

Several hundred more people, mostly from the Chakma ethnic group and some Rohingya, have gathered on the Myanmar border to enter Bangladesh as fighting between Myanmar’s rebel forces and its junta regime intensifies, said Mohammad Mizanur Rahman, Bangladesh’s refugee relief and repatriation commissioner based in Cox’s Bazar.