The Rohingya are facing a new crisis. Cuts to foreign aid by the United States government under Donald Trump have caused huge upsets in the humanitarian sector worldwide and refugees are among the hardest hit. The cuts have caused a freeze on funds in healthcare facilities within Rohingya camps in Bangladesh leading to a reduction in doctors and healthcare staff available to the residents. The World Food Programme recently announced that it would have to reduce the rations by more than half, raising the spectre of malnutrition and starvation.

Myanmar’s repeated brutal campaigns against the Rohingya, the latest in 2017, have driven hundreds of thousands of Rohingya across the border and into Bangladesh for decades. About a million Rohingya now live in Bangladesh. While Bangladesh has been seen as a compassionate host for accommodating the Rohingya, it has kept the refugees on the edges of society and transformed them into pawns in negotiations for aid.

In this episode of State of Southasia, the journalist and documentary filmmaker Shafiur Rahman speaks to Nayantara Narayanan about how Bangladesh has treated the Rohingya as a disposable population to be contained, controlled, exploited and ultimately abandoned.

This episode is also available on:

🎧 YouTube: https://youtu.be/bbHgMdJc7QY

🎧 Apple podcasts: https://apple.co/41TjaxR

🎧 Website: https://bit.ly/4cc3xFf

Episode notes:

Shafiur Rahman’s recommendations:

Myanmar’s Enemy Within - Francis Wade (non-fiction)

Wasted Lives: Modernity and its Outcasts - Zygmunt Bauman (non-fiction)

Tula Toli: Testimonies of a Massacre - Shafiur Rahman (documentary)

Rohingya Network News (newsletter)

Further reading from Himal’s archives:

How Bangladesh is exploiting the Rohingya refugee crisis (https://www.himalmag.com/politics/bangladesh-rohingya-refugees-myanmar-aid)

A Rohingya photographer’s dispatch on food-aid cuts in the refugee camps (https://www.himalmag.com/politics/rohingya-photographer-dispatch-on-food-aid-cuts-in-the-refugee-camps-coxs-bazar)

Myanmar, Bangladesh, and the global game over Rohingya repatriation (https://www.himalmag.com/comment/myanmar-junta-bangladesh-united-states-china-rohingya-repatriation)

Statelessness and Rohingya rights (https://www.himalmag.com/comment/statelessness-and-rohingya-rights)

The Rohingya crisis at sea, and beyond (https://www.himalmag.com/politics/the-rohingya-refugee-crisis-at-sea-and-beyond-struggle-for-justice)

Modi government’s reactive Myanmar policy keeps it from being a constructive force for democracy (https://www.himalmag.com/politics/india-modi-election-2024-myanmar-aung-san-suu-kyi-rohingya-military-junta)

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