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January 20, 2023

Bangladesh Police Extort, Harass Rohingya Refugees

Imagine that angry military men burned down your village and forced you to flee your country. You seek shelter in an overcrowded refugee camp across the border and spend years trying to keep your family safe and eke out a living, while threats from armed groups and other dangers mount.

Now imagine that the police meant to protect you are instead piling on the abuse.

For many Rohingya living in refugee camps in Cox's Bazaar, Bangladesh, this is a daily reality. A new report finds that members of Bangladesh's Armed Police Battalion (APBn), which oversees security in the camps, is committing extortion, arbitrary arrests, and harassment of Rohingya refugees.

Human Rights Watch spoke to dozens of refugees and reviewed police reports, finding among other abuses several cases of Rohingya being detained on fabricated drug charges or being framed with drugs or weapons.

One man, Sayed Hossein, who works as a health volunteer with an international organization, said police arrested him allegedly for a social media post he made. At the station, they demanded a bribe. When his family could not pay it, he said that officers photographed him with drugs, posted the photos to social media, and detained him on drug trafficking charges.

WATCH: No Justice, No Freedom for Rohingya

The crackdown has compounded fear among the one million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, the majority of whom fled Myanmar in late 2017 after the country's military onslaught against the Rohingya, which amounted to crimes against humanity and possible genocide. The police abuses have escalated amid increasingly coercive restrictions by Bangladesh authorities on refugees' livelihoods, movement, and education in the camps, including harassment at checkpoints and closing community schools and markets. They also face threats of violence from armed gangs in the camps.

Sadly, the police abuse is now familiar. “In Myanmar, the security forces used to charge us money for anything, any time they wanted,” one man said. “Now in the camps, Bangladesh law enforcement is doing the same thing.”

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