In the Rohingya camps of Cox’s Bazar, control increasingly defines everyday life. Human Rights Watch documented in 2022 that barbed-wire fencing, checkpoints, shop demolitions, and tight restrictions on movement were implemented on the grounds of “security,” creating an environment where protection had merged with surveillance. The organisation found that what began as emergency assistance had gradually turned into a system of regulation, with authorities justifying each new restriction by citing the need to maintain “law and order” inside the camps.
The policy of communication blackout emerged earlier in 2019, when Bangladesh shut down mobile networks in Rohingya settlements, formally citing national security. HRW warned that the shutdown endangered humanitarian services. The New Humanitarian reported that the ban severed family connections, cut off access to information and emergency help, and deepened isolation. Al Jazeera confirmed that the government ordered telecom operators to block Rohingya access to SIM cards, again describing the measure as necessary for stability. Rights groups argued that these policies undermined both safety and dignity.
The consequences of securitized policy were tragically clear in March 2021, when a massive fire tore through the camps. HRW reported that fencing obstructed escape routes, contributing to injuries and deaths. The organisation concluded that barriers justified as “protection” became lethal during crisis. Despite these failures, restrictions tightened. In 2023, HRW recorded rising violence in the camps and noted that policing and justice mechanisms remained constrained within a complex structure of surveillance couched in security rhetoric. It further observed that some Rohingya community leaders were pressured into becoming informants as part of these security-driven arrangements.
Alongside rising control, HRW’s 2024 reporting showed that Rohingya attempting to enter Bangladesh amid renewed violence in Myanmar were turned back at the border. Authorities cited “capacity limits” and “security concerns,” leaving new arrivals without protection or humanitarian support. The language of threat rather than refuge shaped these decisions, embedding a logic that prioritised border stability over asylum.
Academic research reinforces this picture. MR Howlader’s 2025 analysis describes how Bangladeshi discourse increasingly treats the Rohingya crisis through the prism of national security. The study notes that refugees are framed as risks associated with crime, extremism, and demographic pressure. In 2023, Md. Shahnawaz Rana applied securitization theory to Bangladesh’s policies, demonstrating how state narratives classify Rohingya as an “extraordinary threat” requiring exceptional measures — a process that transforms humanitarian governance into a form of control. A 2025 study by ABMN Sakib similarly found that official communication links the presence of Rohingya to potential instability, terrorism, and criminal activity, reinforcing a cycle where refugees become permanent suspects.
Surveys and document analyses linked to RRRC and academic theses have shown how such narratives filter into local perceptions, where Rohingya communities are increasingly described as economic, social, and security burdens. Vernacular security perspectives from 2025 reveal how labels such as “criminals,” “radicals,” and “spies” circulate inside the camps, producing the effect of a “suspect community” even among people already stripped of legal status.
These developments in Bangladesh mirror Myanmar’s long-standing security narrative. The UN Fact-Finding Mission’s 2018 report detailed how Myanmar authorities branded the Rohingya as “terrorists” and “illegal immigrants,” framing operations in Rakhine as counterterrorism responses. The mission concluded that these labels served as justification for systematic violence, village destruction, and mass displacement. A Penn Law analysis from 2017 similarly noted that Myanmar characterised widespread atrocities as part of a counterterrorism campaign. In the International Court of Justice case The Gambia v. Myanmar, filings highlighted that alleged attacks on security posts were used to legitimise clearance operations that expelled hundreds of thousands of Rohingya.
UN updates in 2025, reported by Africanews, confirmed that Myanmar continued describing its actions in Rakhine as “legitimate counterterrorism,” even as abuses persisted. Reuters, drawing on investigations by the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, reported that the military had razed Rohingya villages and rebuilt them as security outposts. These findings showed how the language of security was weaponised to erase communities and consolidate military control.
The regional context amplifies this pattern. India’s directives, as reported by the Times of India in 2025, ordered crackdowns on Rohingya labelled as “illegal immigrants,” situating refugees within a national security framework rather than a humanitarian one. Earlier assessments by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung noted that border narratives in South Asia frequently associated Rohingya migration with narcotics, trafficking, and extremism, reinforcing state-driven securitization. In these cross-border politics, humanitarian obligations recede behind strategic calculations.
Media framing adds another layer to the narrative. Article 19’s 2022 report documented how Bangladeshi and regional outlets increasingly depicted Rohingya through frames of disease, crime, and burden, shifting away from earlier portrayals of vulnerability. Research covering 2017–2019 showed that Bangladeshi newspapers moved from humanitarian storytelling to discourses centred on security and demography. Md. Sayeed Al-Zaman’s 2024 global sentiment analysis confirmed that international news increasingly used terms such as “management,” “burden,” and “security,” signalling declining empathy. APRRN’s 2025 advocacy brief highlighted the rise of hate speech and misinformation that framed Rohingya as terrorists or infiltrators. The shift was also visible in the editorial records of Rohingya Khobor itself, which noted how global sympathy diminished in the face of bureaucratic and security-centric rhetoric.
The theoretical backbone for these developments lies in the Copenhagen School of securitization. Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde describe securitization as the process by which political actors portray a group as an existential threat requiring extraordinary measures. Their framework — identifying who securitizes, on what issue, for what audience, with what consequences — directly applies to both Bangladesh’s and Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya. In this model, refugee populations become subjects of control rather than rights holders, as their presence is reframed as a problem to be managed. The Copenhagen School also notes that migration and displacement are among the most frequently securitized issues globally, as states redefine humanitarian challenges into political risks.
Across all these records, the pattern is consistent. Bangladesh justifies restrictions in the camps — fencing, movement limits, shop demolitions, communication bans — through the language of order and security. Myanmar uses counterterrorism narratives to rationalise atrocities and ongoing repression. India and regional actors adopt similar language to avoid responsibility and legitimise crackdowns. The media reflects and reinforces this shift, while academic research identifies the process as a textbook case of securitization.
Documentation from rights organisations, UN bodies, and investigative journalism produces a unified portrait: protection has been transformed into management. Policing, surveillance, and exclusion are naturalised through the vocabulary of risk. For Rohingya refugees, this means that access to mobility, communication, education, and belonging is shaped by frameworks that view them not as survivors of persecution but as potential sources of instability.
In Bangladesh, this logic explains why refugees are restricted from moving outside camp boundaries, why they face communication bans, and why new arrivals are turned back despite ongoing violence across the border. In Myanmar, the same logic explains why villages were razed, why mass displacement was described as counterterrorism, and why efforts at accountability meet institutional resistance. In the region, it underpins policies that treat displaced people as intruders rather than victims of state violence.
Each source, examined across time and geography, reveals how the Rohingya crisis has been redefined. The security narrative offers states a vocabulary that normalises control, deflects accountability, and transforms vulnerable communities into strategic concerns. Through this vocabulary, extraordinary measures become routine. Fences become acceptable, communication bans become necessary, border pushbacks become rational, and mass displacement becomes a counterterrorism operation.
What these reports collectively show is that when the Rohingya are securitized, their rights become secondary to the narratives constructed around them. Their displacement is understood not as a humanitarian emergency but as a matter of policing and border management. Their presence becomes a problem, and their protection becomes conditional.
Documented evidence from HRW, UN missions, global and regional media, academic studies, securitization theory, and cross-border political analyses converges on a single conclusion: security narratives do not protect the Rohingya; they confine them. The language of security transforms persecution into policy and strips refugees of rights that international law promises them. When protection is framed through control, the distinction between safeguarding and restricting collapses. The Rohingya experience the consequences every day — in the fences that hem them in, in the silence of blocked phone lines, in the borders that refuse them entry, and in the narratives that cast them as threats rather than people seeking safety.
