Bangladesh Says it Won’t Assimilate Rohingya Muslims

Bangladesh Says it Won’t Assimilate Rohingya Muslims

https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/asia/bangladesh-says-wont-assimilate-rohingya-muslims.html

This article features the Bangladeshi government’s stance regarding the current Rohingya crisis. Since the current outbreak of the crisis, Bangladesh, as the joint-border Muslim country, has received and housed more than 700,000 Rohingya refugees. Despite its lack of economic, social capacity to host all the refugees, they have been demonstrating reasonably generous treatment to the Rohingya refugees till now. However, today, its government has announced that “We are not thinking of assimilating them in Bangladesh. They belong to Myanmar.” Given the inhumane, violent incidents happening in Myanmar against the Rohingya, Bangladesh is planning to offer a remote island called Bhasan Char as a temporary refugee camp, but they pointed out that Myanmar is the one who is ultimately responsible for this population and the more developed countries should share the responsibility for this humanitarian crisis.

From my understanding of the Rohingya crisis, the current tension between the “Burmese” and Rohingya population is rooted in a long history of religious tension between Islam and Buddhism. Thus, I speculated that Bangladesh has been hosting Rohingya refugees to demonstrate support and solidarity to their religious fellows. However, maybe the religious and humanitarian solidarity cannot justify the economic and social burden Bangladesh has to face. Now, being chased out of their hometown and moving into a country where they are not welcomed, the Rohingya refugees suffer from the marginalization from the boundaries of the state, religious and ethnic dynamics.

This article has made me curious if Rohingya refugees have any other possible destination choices around the region and if there is any possibility of this crisis expanding to a bigger region. Given the immense diversity and long history that induce seemingly perpetual conflicts and relatively lower economic capacity of the Southeast Asian region, what makes this region even more vulnerable to such a migration crisis? Also, what role has the national religion to play in is diplomatic strategy?