Remember those touching moments in 2017 when Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina toured the Rohingya refugee camps for a photo op doing the maternal thing of hugging little kids? That was after she ordered the border guards to keep fleeing Rohingya refugees out. She & her officials have been talking the voluntary repatriation thing for refugees either back to Arakan state into concentration camps with no rights or protection or to a concentration camp on a water-logged, uninhabitable island in the middle of nowhere. It was just a matter of time before that voluntary schtick became mandatory deportations for thousands of still-traumatized refugees.

Is it overwhelming for Bangladesh to manage nearly two million Rohingya refugees? Of course there are problems of integration & providing services like education, housing, medical care, employment. But the solution is not to deny them services or find a dumping ground for the Rohingya. The solution is to completely involve the Rohingya in addressing their conditions & the solutions they propose, politically to address the genocide, & to address their humanitarian crises.

https://www.dw.com/en/bangladesh-to-un-support-rohingya-island-relocation-or-leave-the-country/a-50284651?