DHAKA: Bangladesh has stepped up its border with Myanmar as at least 18,000 Rohingya Muslims have crossed in recent months to escape rising violence in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state, officials in Dhaka said.
The influx of refugees from Myanmar has increased as fighting escalates between the ruling junta's troops and the Arakan Army, a powerful ethnic militia that recruits from the Buddhist majority.
“Thousands of Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh and many are waiting to cross. The situation is desperate,” said a foreign ministry official, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The new arrivals join more than a million Rohingya refugees already living in overcrowded camps in Cox's Bazar district after fleeing a military crackdown in Myanmar in 2017. They have little hope of returning to Myanmar, where they are widely denied citizenship and other basic rights.
The arrivals have more than doubled the government’s estimate earlier this month, despite Bangladesh repeatedly saying it cannot accept more Rohingya refugees as resources are already stretched thin.
“Border vigilance has increased, but managing our 271km (168-mile) border with Myanmar is a challenge, especially without a security counterpart on the other side,” said another government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The official said many Rohingya were desperate and were finding ways to cross the border into Bangladesh.
The government has yet to decide whether to register those who recently entered and are living in refugee camps, a foreign ministry official said.
“If we decided to register them, we could open the floodgates, and that's something we can't afford to do,” he said. “But at the same time, how long can we ignore this problem? That's the real question.”
Bangladesh's interim head of government, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, has called for the rapid resettlement of the Rohingya in a third country as a long-term solution, but the foreign ministry official said progress on resettlement had been limited.
“About 2,000 people have benefited from the resettlement program since it resumed in 2022 after a gap of 12 years,” he said, adding that the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland are among the countries hosting refugees.
