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.

Rahman said Bangladesh was “overburdened” by Rohingya. “It has been seven years and we have not been able to repatriate them,” he said.

“Keeping Rohingya Mus­­lims in Bangladesh has become a threat to our security, our law and order. It is creating a vulnerable situation for cross-border crime.”

Published in Dawn, February 8th, 2024