After decades of discrimination and, more recently, years of persecution, there are now far more Rohingya – more than 1 million – in Bangladesh than are left in their home, Rakhine State in Myanmar. Last week, a small delegation of 20 Rohingya and seven Bangladeshi officials visited an area of villages in Rakhine State to see what was on offer as part of a pilot repatriation project.
It may seem bizarre to raise the prospect of returning to a country that has been riven with civil war since the military coup of February 2021; a country where schools, concerts and ordinary villages have been bombed by the generals’ forces and in which 1.4 million people have been displaced over the past two years, and one third of the population left in need of humanitarian aid.
But as in many war-torn countries, there are occasional pockets where some semblance of normal life continues. For instance, I have been invited to a wedding in Yangon, the old capital, this autumn, with my hosts assuring me that it will be perfectly safe. (I won't be going.)
Whether the Myanmar authorities could ensure that an area for repatriated Rohingya was safe is doubtful, as are their true intentions. There is no offer of citizenship, only National Verification Cards – thus perpetuating the denial of citizenship that was enshrined in the nationality law of 1982. “This will effectively identify Rohingya as foreigners,” one of the delegation told Reuters, while another dismissed the proposed accommodation, saying: “We don't want to be confined in camps. We want to get back our land and we will build our own houses there. We'll only return with citizenship and all our rights.”
What really strains credulity over the sincerity of the offer is the obvious: how could the Rohingya return to a country run by a military that led what the Biden administration and some UN officials have called a campaign of genocide against them less than six years ago?
Yet, conditions in the 30 camps in the Cox’s Bazar region of Bangladesh, where more than 1 million Rohingya live, are grim and dangerous. Hundreds of thousands more are in other countries. As this newspaper recently reported, the camps are plagued by gang wars, arson attacks, kidnappings and killings. To add to the misery, the World Food Programme cut the food vouchers it has been providing from $12 to $10 per person per month at the beginning of March, prompting Save the Children in Bangladesh to state that “Rohingya children and their families are at breaking point and need more support, not less”. In the last days, reports have come out that a further cut, to $8 per person per month, may be on the cards.
Although a survey last year showed Bangladeshis to be broadly empathetic to the Rohingya, with respondents saying they were “expelled”, “victims” and “we should help”, the country cannot be expected to host such a large number indefinitely. Quite apart from the well-documented mental health problems of the long-term displaced, Azeem Ibrahim of the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington, and author of The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Genocide, warns of another tragic possibility. “As things stand, we may reasonably expect the Rohingya identity to disappear completely within one generation,” he wrote last year. “Their language, culture, history, their way of life, will all have been diluted to extinction in the multitude of refugee camps that are now home to the majority of people who call themselves by the centuries-old name, Rohingya.”
There is no offer of citizenship, only National Verification Cards – thus perpetuating the denial of citizenship that was enshrined in the nationality law of 1982
Equally debilitating for the people in Cox’s Bazaar is the fact that they are banned from formal employment in Bangladesh. Never mind the dignity the individual is provided by work: this is highly inefficient given the large number of able-bodied people who could be employed productively and who yearn to do so.
The UN Refugee Agency lists three main paths for refugees to live lives of dignity and peace: voluntary repatriation, resettlement and integration. The first is going to be totally unacceptable to the overwhelming majority of Rohingya until there is a change of regime in Myanmar. The opposition National Unity Government would offer the Rohingya citizenship, justice and accountability for crimes against them; but it is unclear when, if ever, the NUG will win power in the country. The second, resettlement, would scatter the Rohingya into a diaspora that would surely harm their identity, as no country is likely to take more than several thousand as permanent residents.
The third, integration, has been urged in a paper just published by the Centre for International and Strategic Studies in Washington: following the examples of either the “Jordan Compact”, whereby major concessions are offered by the EU and the US in return for refugees being able to work in a normal way; or of Colombia, which naturalised nearly 2 million Venezuelans in 2021. But as the paper points out, “an ‘ask’ of this magnitude from the West of Bangladesh would likely require a face-to-face meeting between President Biden and [Prime Minister] Sheikh Hasina” – and enormous financial support.
That would be a mammoth effort, would require significant worldwide buy-in, and would still leave a people cruelly dispossessed of their ancestral home. What isn’t viable, though, is allowing new generations of Rohingya to grow up with little education, food or ways of providing for themselves, and next to no hope for the future. The world has plenty to worry about at the moment, but the desperate plight of the million people in Cox’s Bazar mustn’t be allowed to fall off our radar. They deserve our attention just as much as the peoples of Ukraine and Sudan.
World Test Championship table
1 India 71 per cent
2 New Zealand 70 per cent
3 Australia 69.2 per cent
4 England 64.1 per cent
5 Pakistan 43.3 per cent
6 West Indies 33.3 per cent
7 South Africa 30 per cent
8 Sri Lanka 16.7 per cent
9 Bangladesh 0
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
Company Profile:
Name: The Protein Bakeshop
Date of start: 2013
Founders: Rashi Chowdhary and Saad Umerani
Based: Dubai
Size, number of employees: 12
Funding/investors: $400,000 (2018)
Company%C2%A0profile
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
EMIRATES'S%20REVISED%20A350%20DEPLOYMENT%20SCHEDULE
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Indoor Cricket World Cup - Sept 16-20, Insportz, Dubai
KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
Company%20Profile
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Turning%20waste%20into%20fuel
%3Cp%3EAverage%20amount%20of%20biofuel%20produced%20at%20DIC%20factory%20every%20month%3A%20%3Cstrong%3EApproximately%20106%2C000%20litres%3C%2Fstrong%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EAmount%20of%20biofuel%20produced%20from%201%20litre%20of%20used%20cooking%20oil%3A%20%3Cstrong%3E920ml%20(92%25)%3C%2Fstrong%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3ETime%20required%20for%20one%20full%20cycle%20of%20production%20from%20used%20cooking%20oil%20to%20biofuel%3A%20%3Cstrong%3EOne%20day%3C%2Fstrong%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EEnergy%20requirements%20for%20one%20cycle%20of%20production%20from%201%2C000%20litres%20of%20used%20cooking%20oil%3A%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3E%E2%96%AA%20Electricity%20-%201.1904%20units%3Cbr%3E%E2%96%AA%20Water-%2031%20litres%3Cbr%3E%E2%96%AA%20Diesel%20%E2%80%93%2026.275%20litres%3C%2Fstrong%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Draw:
Group A: Egypt, DR Congo, Uganda, Zimbabwe
Group B: Nigeria, Guinea, Madagascar, Burundi
Group C: Senegal, Algeria, Kenya, Tanzania
Group D: Morocco, Ivory Coast, South Africa, Namibia
Group E: Tunisia, Mali, Mauritania, Angola
Group F: Cameroon, Ghana, Benin, Guinea-Bissau
The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre V8
Power: 503hp at 6,000rpm
Torque: 685Nm at 2,000rpm
Transmission: 8-speed auto
Price: from Dh850,000
On sale: now
Petrarch: Everywhere a Wanderer
Christopher Celenza,
Reaktion Books
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
FULL%20FIGHT%20CARD
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Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
- Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
- Flexible payment plans from developers
- Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
- DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
The National Archives, Abu Dhabi
Founded over 50 years ago, the National Archives collects valuable historical material relating to the UAE, and is the oldest and richest archive relating to the Arabian Gulf.
Much of the material can be viewed on line at the Arabian Gulf Digital Archive - https://www.agda.ae/en
LILO & STITCH
Starring: Sydney Elizebeth Agudong, Maia Kealoha, Chris Sanders
Director: Dean Fleischer Camp
Rating: 4.5/5
The Sand Castle
Director: Matty Brown
Stars: Nadine Labaki, Ziad Bakri, Zain Al Rafeea, Riman Al Rafeea
Rating: 2.5/5
If you go
- The nearest international airport to the start of the Chuysky Trakt is in Novosibirsk. Emirates (www.emirates.com) offer codeshare flights with S7 Airlines (www.s7.ru) via Moscow for US$5,300 (Dh19,467) return including taxes. Cheaper flights are available on Flydubai and Air Astana or Aeroflot combination, flying via Astana in Kazakhstan or Moscow. Economy class tickets are available for US$650 (Dh2,400).
- The Double Tree by Hilton in Novosibirsk ( 7 383 2230100,) has double rooms from US$60 (Dh220). You can rent cabins at camp grounds or rooms in guesthouses in the towns for around US$25 (Dh90).
- The transport Minibuses run along the Chuysky Trakt but if you want to stop for sightseeing, hire a taxi from Gorno-Altaisk for about US$100 (Dh360) a day. Take a Russian phrasebook or download a translation app. Tour companies such as Altair-Tour ( 7 383 2125115 ) offer hiking and adventure packages.
WOMAN AND CHILD
Director: Saeed Roustaee
Starring: Parinaz Izadyar, Payman Maadi
Rating: 4/5
What can victims do?
Always use only regulated platforms
Stop all transactions and communication on suspicion
Save all evidence (screenshots, chat logs, transaction IDs)
Report to local authorities
Warn others to prevent further harm
Courtesy: Crystal Intelligence
UK-EU trade at a glance
EU fishing vessels guaranteed access to UK waters for 12 years
Co-operation on security initiatives and procurement of defence products
Youth experience scheme to work, study or volunteer in UK and EU countries
Smoother border management with use of e-gates
Cutting red tape on import and export of food
GAC GS8 Specs
Engine: 2.0-litre 4cyl turbo
Power: 248hp at 5,200rpm
Torque: 400Nm at 1,750-4,000rpm
Transmission: 8-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 9.1L/100km
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh149,900
THE CLOWN OF GAZA
Director: Abdulrahman Sabbah
Starring: Alaa Meqdad
Rating: 4/5
