Fortify Rights urges Bangladesh to close Bhasan Char and end Rohingya detention

Mizzima

On 21 January, Fortify Rights called on the interim Government of Bangladesh to immediately close Bhasan Char, the isolated island refugee camp in the Bay of Bengal, and to grant all Rohingya refugees from Myanmar freedom of movement and the right to work, said Fortify Rights in a new report.

Based on more than 100 interviews conducted over five years, the 36-page report finds that Rohingya refugees confined on Bhasan Char are subjected to severe restrictions on liberty that amount to de facto arbitrary detention in violation of Bangladesh’s constitution and international law.

The press release accompanying the new report continues below.

“The Bangladesh authorities should immediately close the camp on Bhasan Char and end the mass arbitrary detention of Rohingya refugees on the island as well as on the mainland, and ensure freedom of movement,” said John Quinley, Director at Fortify Rights. “Bhasan Char should never have been considered an appropriate place for refugees. Being a refugee is not a crime, yet Rohingya from Myanmar have been treated as if it were. The island, in practice, functions more like a penal colony—that is neither lawful nor humane.”

The report, “Like Prisoners:” The Mass Arbitrary Detention and ‘Warehousing’ of Rohingya Refugees from Myanmar on Bhasan Char in Bangladesh, calls on the government of Bangladesh to permanently close Bhasan Char, end refugee “warehousing,” and guarantee all Rohingya refugees’ freedom of movement, liberty, and access to livelihoods by dismantling restrictive policies nationwide.

The new report, researched over the course of five years, documents human rights violations associated with the “warehousing” of Rohingya refugees, with a focus on restrictions on freedom of movement. Refugee “warehousing” involves the practice of keeping refugees in protracted situations of restricted mobility, enforced idleness, and aid dependency in violation of human rights. Testimonies documented in the report indicate that Bangladeshi authorities, primarily under former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, routinely misled, coerced, or threatened Rohingya refugees with detention and abuse if they resisted relocation to Bhasan Char.

Upon their transfer to the island, Rohingya refugees quickly discovered that traveling back to the mainland refugee camps, even for legitimate reasons such as medical care, funerals, weddings, and family reunification, was severely restricted and subject to arbitrary decisions and time-consuming application processes, often resulting in refusals. This has been a consistent concern for refugees since 2021 and remains so today.

“Like Prisoners” is based on 102 interviews, including with Rohingya refugees on Bhasan Char, their relatives, humanitarian aid workers, journalists, and others. This report is the product of research conducted between May 2020 and October 2025, including documentation on the island itself.

In 2018, following a mass influx of Rohingya refugees fleeing a genocidal military campaign in Myanmar, the Bangladesh government proposed relocating Rohingya refugees from Cox’s Bazar District to Bhasan Char, ostensibly to ease overcrowding in the mainland refugee camps. Deposed and recently indicted, former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina spearheaded the initiative, which aimed to move up to 100,000 Rohingya refugees to the island.

In May 2020, Bangladeshi authorities began transferring Rohingya refugees to Bhasan Char. Despite initially resisting the plan, on October 9, 2021, the U.N. signed an agreement with the Bangladeshi government on the provision of humanitarian services for Rohingya refugees on the island. According to the U.N. and government of Bangladesh, there were more than 34,500 Rohingya refugees on Bhasan Char as of December 2025.

Fortify Rights has privately and publicly highlighted Bhasan Char’s inappropriateness as a place to house refugees, and the organization has consistently documented human rights violations on and related to the project. Although the previous Bangladesh government repeatedly stated that Rohingya relocation to Bhasan Char would be entirely voluntary, Fortify Rights exposed multiple instances of the authorities forcing, coercing, or otherwise carrying out involuntary transfers to the island. Refugees transferred to Bhasan Char reported severe restrictions on movement and serious mental health concerns. Fortify Rights also documented how the agreement between the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and the Bangladeshi authorities codified restrictions on the freedom of Rohingya refugee movement on and off the island.

After years of rejecting criticism directed toward Bhasan Char, in a recent interview with Fortify Rights, Mohammad Mizanur Rahman, Bangladesh’s current Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner, said “The government is not interested in continuing the Bhasan Char project,” conceding that conditions on the island are “a kind of confinement.” In recent media interviews, Rahman has also labelled Bhasan Char “a fai led project.” Despite these statements, Rohingya refugees remain arbitrarily detained on Bhasan Char, and the interim Bangladeshi government has not publicly laid out plans to close the island camp.

With the publication of the new report, Fortify Rights offers to assist the Bangladesh authorities in ensuring they respect and protect the rights of Rohingya refugees.

Rohingya interviewees repeatedly told Fortify Rights that government officials had misled them by promising material benefits, such as employment and monthly cash payments, or third-country resettlement, in an attempt to agree to be transferred to Bhasan Char. As part of this effort, Bangladesh officials organized large meetings to show misleading videos to Rohingya refugees, and went “door-to-door” to convince people to relocate to the island. One refugee, quoted in the report, described to Fortify Rights what a government official said at such a large gathering:

“If you go to Bhasan Char, we will give you cows, you can do farming there, we will give you money, and we will give you proper houses.” They also mentioned giving goats, chickens, ducks, shops, and other benefits. They have sent us here by alluring us with these promises.

Other refugees shared their experiences of coercive pressure to submit to relocations to Bhasan Char, which also included threats of forced repatriation to Myanmar and the seizure of their registration cards, without which they cannot access goods and services. A 45-year-old refugee told Fortify Rights:

They said, “You have to go to Bhasan Char. You can’t stay here in the camp.” Some of the Majhi [unelected, appointed camp leaders] replied to them, “What if we go to another camp rather than going to Bhasan Char?” The authorities said, “You can’t go to another camp, but you have two options: either you go back to Myanmar, or you go to Bhasan Char.”

Once on the island, Rohingya refugees faced prison-like conditions, including barbed wire fences and guard towers around the camps, constant patrols by armed guards, as well as 24-hour CCTV surveillance. A Rohingya man, 29, originally from Maungdaw Township in Myanmar and still on the island at the time of publication, told Fortify Rights:

It is like a prison here. … [W]e don’t want to live here at all, let alone for years. People can’t just leave because of the Navy guards and control by the authorities. If there is no guard or control, not a single person will remain here. All will leave this place.

Further compounding prison-like conditions on the island, Rohingya who wish to travel from Bhasan Char to the mainland camps to visit family or for other reasons face significant restrictions. In recent years, Bangladesh authorities have attempted to ease these restrictions, with some family visitation trips facilitated by the Bangladesh Navy, but many Rohingya seeking to visit or relocate to the mainland for legitimate purposes still report that the application process is opaque and arbitrary and often requires bribes, though this still does not guarantee the movement would be granted.

The title of this new report, “Like Prisoners,” reflects the words of a 38-year-old Rohingya man and genocide survivor from Myanmar on Bhasan Char who, in July 2024, told Fortify Rights: “If we are to live on Bhasan Char for an extended period, it is essential for us to be able to visit our relatives, as we are human beings. Currently, we feel as though we are confined here, like prisoners.”

Bangladesh law, including its constitution, guarantees everyone in Bangladesh freedom from arbitrary deprivation of their liberty. Article 9 of the U.N. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Bangladesh is a state party, also prohibits arbitrary deprivation of liberty. Under international law, freedom from arbitrary deprivation of liberty is an absolute, or non-derogable, right that cannot be suspended or restricted under any circumstances, including national emergencies and war. Moreover, freedom from arbitrary deprivation of liberty is also considered a peremptory, or jus cogens, norm of general international law binding on all states and hierarchically superior to other norms of international law. These protections apply to Bangladesh citizens and non-citizens alike.

The U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD), the only body within the international human rights system with a mandate to receive and examine cases of arbitrary deprivation of liberty, states that deprivation of personal liberty occurs “whenever a person is being held without his or her free consent.” Typically, detention occurs in places like prisons and police stations, but the WGAD also recognizes irregular detention sites, such as psychiatric institutions and administrative detention, as well as instances of de facto deprivation of liberty–where individuals are in theory able to leave a location, but in practice are unable to do so.

While there are limited legitimate reasons under internationa The U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD), the only body within the international human rights system with a mandate to receive and examine cases of arbitrary deprivation of liberty, states that deprivation of personal liberty occurs “whenever a person is being held without his or her free consent.” Typically, detention occurs in places like prisons and police stations, but the WGAD also recognizes irregular detention sites, such as psychiatric institutions and administrative detention, as well as instances of de facto deprivation of liberty–where individuals are in theory able to leave a location, but in practice are unable to do so.

While there are limited legitimate reasons under international law to deprive individuals of their liberty, such as when they are convicted or suspected of committing a crime, deprivation of liberty becomes illegitimate when it is arbitrary. The WGAD has found that deprivation of liberty can be considered arbitrary when it results from the exercise of a fundamental human right, such as the right to seek asylum, and when it is discriminatory toward a particular ethnic, religious, or social group.

The confinement of Rohingya refugees on Bhasan Char amounts to de facto and arbitrary deprivation of liberty on a massive scale, Fortify Rights said.

“The Bangladesh interim government and the international community must learn from the failed Bhasan Char project,” said Professor Ken MacLean, a co-author of the report, Senior Advisor at Fortify Rights and faculty member at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University. “Protecting the rights of refugees, including the right to work and freedom of movement, is not only good for refugees, but also for Bangladesh. Countries that host refugees often report significant economic and even social improvements after respecting the rights of refugees, and states that violate the rights of refugees often face a litany of negative consequences, as Bangladesh has.”