In 2017, a heartless military crackdown forced over 700,000 Rohingya to go from Myanmar to Bangladesh. But stringent movement hindrances, violence and extortion these Muslims now deal in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camps are making some so desperate that they are thinking about suicide, according to a report released on Friday. Cox’s Bazar is a town on the south-east coast of Bangladesh.
Bangladesh hosts about one million Rohingya refugees who have dim prospects of going back home after a February 2021 military coup got Myanmar into turbulence. Although the Rohingya were recognised by Myanmar as illegal migrants and subjected to organized intolerance prior to their 2017 exodus, several of them now understand living conditions in Bangladeshi refugee camps to be worse than what they left behind in Myanmar, the report by Youth Congress Rohingya (YCR), a refugee-led civil society organisation, and Fortify Rights, a non-governmental organisation, conveyed.
The report was based on surveys of 241 at random chosen refugees and 54 detailed interviews with Rohingya respondents from 30 unique camps across the Cox’s Bazar district, as well as four interviews with police officers. Members of the YCR, who did the interviews, liked not to be recognised in the report for terror of a government backlash.