Edibe Beyza CaglarEight years after what the UN called a “textbook case of ethnic cleansing,” more than a million Rohingya remain stranded in Bangladesh’s refugee camps — stateless, silenced, and with little hope for return.
In August 2017, Myanmar’s military torched entire villages, slaughtered thousands, and forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims to flee across the border into Cox’s Bazar. Today, far from the world’s attention, they endure life in the world’s largest refugee camp — a place of survival, grief, and fading hope.
Jamila Khatun, 50, still carries the pain of the night her life was torn apart.
“On Friday, the military stormed into our village,” she told TRT World. “They beat people and set our homes on fire. Gunshots rang out everywhere.”
Jamila lost her husband that night.
“My husband was taken away by the soldiers… and then they killed him. We fled during the gunfire, crawling through the chaos.” Somehow, Jamila managed to reach Bangladesh, “exhausted and broken.”
By nightfall, endless streams of families — mothers clutching infants, children clinging to their parents, the elderly barely able to walk — staggered across rice paddies and rivers into Bangladesh, where bamboo shelters and barbed wire became their new reality.
Stripped of citizenship since 1982, the Rohingya now live in limbo, marked by hunger, loss, and resilience, with no path back home.
And for those who remained in Rakhine state in Myanmar, the nightmare has only deepened: in 2024, a new wave of ethnic cleansing erupted, this time at the hands of the Arakan Army, a Buddhist ethnic militant group.
Arakan Army targeted Rohingya villages with killings, arson, and forced displacement, accusing them of siding with the military and treating them as outsiders in their own homeland.
No relief for Rohingya
In 2024, villages like Hoyasuri witnessed fresh massacres, where entire families were rounded up and executed, survivors told TRT World.
“We were all taken to a paddy field,” said Hasina Begum, now 35 years old, her voice breaking as she recalled hiding beneath corpses. “They divided us into three groups. When they fired, I was hit by a bullet.”
“I was bleeding so much,” Begum said and added, “AA (Arakan Army) hit my head with a gun and checked if I was dead or alive.”
Begum crawled among the bodies, feigning death, before slipping into a shallow hole where she remained for six days and nights without food, praying the soldiers would not find her.
As she recounted those nights, one of the very few survivors, Begum said the Arakan Army scoured the bodies for valuables. “They searched the dead, taking money and gold. They cut off women’s ears for their earrings.”
What haunts her most are the youngest victims. “Some toddlers — one or two years old — were still alive after their parents were killed. The Arakan Army dragged them away and threw them into the pond.”
What about accountability?
For the Rohingya, justice remains out of reach. Despite international scrutiny of Myanmar, neither the military nor the Arakan Army has faced meaningful consequences.
“There is no justice mechanism,” said Ro Khin Maung, a human rights activist in Cox’s Bazar. “If someone in the camp is facing a social issue, there is no one to turn to. That is one of our biggest challenges.”
Life in the camps offers little dignity. Refugees say they are stripped not only of justice, but also of education, social life, and the most basic standards of living.
“People are unable to study properly. The schools in the camp don’t provide formal education. If a student dreams of becoming an engineer, there is no way to fulfil those dreams here,” Khin Maung said.
Rohingya camps are barred from Bangladesh’s formal education system, and informal schools only go up to the middle school level.
According to a UNICEF report in 2022, more than 400,000 Rohingya children are without access to proper schooling beyond grade 8.
Statelessness defines daily existence. Without citizenship, even basic communication becomes a struggle. “Because of our legal status, we face countless difficulties,” he explained. “Even the SIM cards we use aren’t legal. We have to rely on others to get them. If we had citizenship, we could register them properly.”
Overcrowding and new arrivals fleeing atrocities in Myanmar have only deepened despair.
Families live in shelters averaging just 10 square meters, with population density reaching more than 46,000 people per square kilometer — over 34 times Bangladesh’s national average.
“I feel the same as animals living in the jungle,” said another man. “The place we live now was once a jungle. And it feels like it still is.”
Is vital aid being cut?
For nearly eight years, Rohingya refugees have survived almost entirely on humanitarian assistance. Food rations, healthcare, and education in the camps depend on international aid. But that lifeline is shrinking.
Since early 2025, major cuts have deepened the crisis after US President Donald Trump froze and slashed more than $100 million in assistance. Aid agencies warn of worsening hunger, malnutrition, and insecurity in the already overcrowded camps.
The cuts come on top of a years-long decline in donor funding, as global attention shifted away from the Rohingya crisis to new conflicts and disasters. Once described by the UN as a “textbook case of ethnic cleansing,” the Rohingya’s plight now risks becoming a forgotten emergency.
A demand for justice
Despite the hardship, the refugees refuse to return to Myanmar without guarantees of safety and citizenship.
“We will only go back if our citizenship is restored,” Jamila Khatun said.
“Otherwise, we will never return. Why would we go back to a place where we were oppressed again and again? The world must deliver justice to us. Only then will we return.”
