•  
  •  
 

Abstract

Bangladesh has a long history of hosting Rohingya from the Northern Rakhine State of Myanmar with the earliest arrivals recorded in 1948. The recent influxes occurred in last few years forced a large number of Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh in the wake of serious state repression in Myanmar. This huge influx of refugees without proper reception and attention from the Bangladeshi side caused severe humanitarian crisis; the appalling conditions of the refugee ghettos are gradually deteriorating. Desperate for their survival, the Rohingya people are infiltrating into various levels of socio-economic structures of Bangladesh without any proper plan/management policy. Often, Bangladesh is been used as the transit zone by the Rohingya people en route to other countries. The paper will analyze the existing situations of access to justice in formal and informal institutions by registered Rohingya Refugees in Cox’s Bazar District in Bangladesh. The specific objective of this paper is to make an assessment of existing situations of rights to access to justice, legal aid and representations, and fair trial of registered Rohingya residing currently in Bangladesh and check these in light of Bangladeshi national legal and international human rights standard. This paper will provide a thorough assessment of existing situation with a clear and precise analysis of international human rights and national legal standard. Some recommendations for improving the situation of Rohingya people for access to justice issue have been made at the end.

References

Alan Lindquist (head of UNHCR sub-office in Cox’s Bazaar in 1978), “Report on the 1978-1979 Bangladesh Refugee Relief Operation,” June 1979. Lindquist states on p. 9: “None of the U.N. agency heads raised any objection to using food as a political weapon.”

Al Jazeera, ‘The Case of French Aid Worker arrested in Bangladesh’ . aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/01/case-french-aid-worker-arrest- ed-bangladesh-160107102806050.html> accessed on March 28, 2016

Al Jazeera, ‘Drug Smuggling: Booming Business at Bangladesh Border’ www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/07/drug-smuggling-bangladesh-myan-mar-150727092848656.html> accessed on April 12, 2016

BBC, ‘Elderly Buddhist Monk hacked to death in Bangladesh’ May 14, 2016 http:// www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36292457 accessed on June 7, 2016

Bridget Welsh, ‘Devided or Together? SouthEast Asia in 2012’; Journal of Southeast Asian Affairs, VOl 2013, pp. 1-13

Bertil Lintner, ‘Burma in Revolt: Opium and Insurgency since 1948’, p. 317.

C. R. Abrar, ‘Govt. Strategy Paper on Rohingyas: Let Humanitarinism prevail’; The Daily Star, June 21, 2014, http://www.thedailystar.net/government-strate- gy-paper-on-rohingyas-29526 accessed on March 20, 2016

Dhaka Tribune, ‘Biggest Ever Haul on Yaba’ January 7, 2016 http://www. dhakatribune.com/crime/2016/jan/07/biggest-ever-haul-yaba-seized-ctg accessed on June 7, 2016

Human Rights Watch, ‘The Rohingya Muslims: Ending a Cycle of Exodus?’, vol. 8, no. 8, September 1996

Human Rights Watch, ‘Sectarian Violence and Ensuing Abuses in Burma’s Arakan state’; July 31, 2012 https://www.hrw.org/report/2012/07/31/government- could-have-stopped/sectarian-violence-and-ensuing-abuses-burmas-ara- kan> accessed on March 21, 2016

Human Rights Watch, Govt. could’ve stopped sectarian violence, July 31, 2012 https://www.hrw.org/report/2012/07/31/government-could-have-stopped/ sectarian-violence-and-ensuing-abuses-burmas-arakan accessed on May 21, 2016

Human Rights Watch, ‘Perilous Plight: Burma’s Rohingya Take to the Seas’ May

2009

IOM, ‘Situation Report on Andaman Sea Crisis’ https://www.iom.int/sites/ default/files/situation_reports/file/IOM-Andaman-Sea-Crisis-Situation-Report- September-2015.pdf accessed on June 3, 2016

Md. Abid Hasan vs Govt. of Bangladesh; 55 DLR (HCD) 2003

“Myanmar moots camps, deportation as Rohingya ‘solution,’” Agence France Presse, July 12, 2012, - mar-moots-camps-deportation-rohingya-solution-0> accessed on June 13, 2016

Patrick Balazo, ‘Truth and Rights: Statelessness, Human Rights and the Rohingya’; UnderCurrent, Fall/Winter2015, Vol. 11 Issue 1, pp. 6-15

Physicians for Human Rights, ‘Stateless and Starving: Persecuted Rohingya Flee Myanmar and Starve in Bangladesh’ – An Emergency Report by the Phy- sicians for Human Rights (2010) https://s3.amazonaws.com/PHR_Reports/ stateless-and-starving.pdf accessed on March 29, 2016

Relief Web, ‘How Bangladesh Aid Restrictions Impact Rohingyas’, http://relief- web.int/report/bangladesh/analysis-how-bangladesh-aid-restrictions-im- pact-rohingyas accessed on June 7, 2016

Sadakat Khan Fakku and Ors vs. the Chief Election Commissioner of Bangla- desh; 28 BLD (HCD) 2008; Also in Khalid Hussain, ‘The End of Bihari Statelessness’; Forced Migration Review, Vol 32 (April 2009)

Shahnawaz A. Mantoo, ‘Bihari Refugees Stranded in Bangladesh since 1971’; The Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol 1 (02), 2013, pp. 123-129 http://esci- journals.net/JSAS/article/view/246/208#.V27dzaLcy00 accessed on March 23, 2016

Sayed Mehdi Momin, ‘The Yaba Epidemic in Bangladesh’; The Independent, September 2015, http://www.theindependentbd.com/printversion/de-

tails/15663 accessed on April 7, 2016

Thant Myint-U, ‘The River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma’ (Farrar, Straus & Giroux: New York, 2006), p. 72

The Daily Star, ‘Bangladeshi Rohingya Camps: Promise or Peril?’; March 2015, http://www.thedailystar.net/bangladeshs-rohingya-camps-promise-or-per- il-52913 accessed on April 23, 2016

The Daily Star, ‘Bangladeshi Rohingya Camps: Promise or Peril?’; March 2015, http://www.thedailystar.net/bangladeshs-rohingya-camps-promise-or-per- il-52913 accessed on April 23, 2016

The Daily Star, ‘Teknaf Ansar Camps under attack: One killed’; May 13, 2016

http://www.thedailystar.net/country/teknaf-ansar-camp-comes-under-attack-1-killed-1223215accessed on June 7, 2016

The Daily Star, “No refuge for Rohingyas: Ashraf,” June 20, 2012, quote by Sayed Ashraf, Minister of Local Govt. & Rural Development

The Diplomat, ‘Refugees and Neghbors, Rohingya in Bangladesh’; October 2015 http://thediplomat.com/2015/10/refugees-and-neighbors-rohingya-in-ban- gladesh accessed on June 5, 2016

The Guardian, ‘Persecuted Tribe finds no welcome in Bangladesh’ https://www. theguardian.com/world/2012/aug/07/bangladesh-persecuted-burmese-tribe- muslim accessed on May 23, 2016

The Guardian, ‘Bangladesh Plans to move Rohingya refugees to island in the South’; May 28, 2015 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/28/bangladesh- plans-to-move-rohingya-refugees-to-island-in-the-south accessed on March 23, 2016

The Guardian, ‘Suu Kyi tells the UN that the term Rohingya will be avoided’; June 21, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/21/aung-san-suu- kyi-tells-un-that-the-term-rohingya-will-be-avoided accessed on June 22, 2016

UNDP, “Integrated Household Living Conditions Survey in Myanmar (2009-2010): Poverty Dynamics Report, June 2011.

UN General Assembly, “Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Hu- man Rights in Myanmar,” A/66/365 (Sept. 16, 2011), p. 17;

UNHCR, The Principle of Non-Refoulement as a Norm of Customary International Law. Response to the Questions Posed to UNHCR by the Federal Constitu- tional Court of the Federal Republic of Germany in Cases 2 BvR 1938/93, 2 BvR 1953/93, 2 BvR 1954/93, 31 January 1994, http://www.unhcr.org/ refworld/docid/437b6db64.html [accessed 17 June 2016]. See also UN Doc. A/RES/51/75, 12 February 1997, para. 3.

UNHCR, ‘Bay of Bengal Boat Flow managable through Regional Cooperation’ June 12, 2015 http://www.unhcr.org/news/latest/2015/12/5661ab566/bay-bengal-boat-flow-manageable-regional-cooperation.html accessed on March 12, 2016

UNHCR, ‘Two Camps of thought on Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh’; January 2013, http://www.unhcr.org/news/latest/2013/1/5106a7609/ camps-thought-helping-rohingya-bangladesh.html accessed on April 27, 2016

UNHCR, ‘Bangladesh: Analysis of the gaps in protecting the Rohingya Refugees’; 2007, http://www.unhcr.org/protect/PROTECTION/46fa1af32.pdf accessed on May 5, 2016

Utpala Rahman. ‘The Rohingya Refugees: A Security Dillema for Bangladesh’; Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies (2010) Vol. 8, Issue 2, pp. 233-

239

Share

COinS