Forced displacement, education, and linguistic violence in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

Note: This research memo is based on my doctoral dissertation fieldwork in Cox’s Bazar. Publications forthcoming. The photo above is from the incident described in my research memo below.

A personal research memo

The night before, at an international UN colleague’s top-floor apartment in Cox’s Bazar, I took an overly optimistic position in a heated conversation. To balance my colleague’s despair that the Rohingya refugee crisis was irresolvable and that the humanitarian system irrevocably broken, I pointed out the many daily victories that I observed against overwhelming odds.

I highlighted the well-resourced learning centers—compared with classrooms in other refugee hosting-settings I had seen—that enjoyed improved levels of girls’ attendance and positive teacher engagement. I spoke of the integrated system that connects child protection, health, and education services. I said I was impressed by the maternity centers that provided women with safe birth facilities. I even admitted that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Government, while increasingly impatient with the whole affair, had demonstrated remarkable generosity.

My colleague reminded me that I do not experience how the UN’s negotiated and delicate relationship with the Government left them with too little decision making authority. They spoke of the corruption, the racism and discrimination, the misogyny, and the gross power asymmetries that effectively render the Rohingya agency-less in their own affairs.

Is this not the systemic violence that they escaped from, that they are experiencing all over again? My colleague asked. My retort was that here, in Bangladesh, while far from being free, at least the Rohingya were comparatively safe. This comment was met with further despair—affirming my naïveté—and a response of “there’s so much you just don’t see.”

The next day, in a large white SUV two Bangladeshi UN colleagues and I pulled up to a Rohingya learning center. It was the first day of the new school year and the UN agency hosting my research was conducting spot checks on teacher and student attendance with a Bangladesh Government official who, bestowed with magisterial power, oversaw refugee services in this particular camp. We met him at the roadside and my UN colleagues shook his hand with an awkward deference that I could not quite place. I walked up to introduce myself but he brushed me off, rushing ahead with the pageantry of school visits.

Hopeful Rohingya parents and grandparents milled around the maroon painted bamboo entrance. Across the road a number of Rohingya elders in Islamic garb stood outside a makeshift mosque, looking on as the bureaucratic ritual of UN and Bangladesh Government monitoring played out.

The government official with a pencil thin mustache, wearing polished brown and gold buckled leather loafers and an oversized gold watch, strode down the dusty path parting the parents and grandparents in his way. No greetings were offered. All eyes were diverted to the ground. I was about 10 meters behind him and could hear the melodic Rohingya-language chanting of children in the throes of rote learning. As soon as the official walked through the door the chanting stopped. I caught up and approached the door, giving my own salaams to the just-ignored bystanders and entered.

In front of the official stood an uncharacteristically old Rohingya teacher and approximately 30 grade two or three students wearing party-like paper hats to celebrate being back at school. Only five were girls. The teacher was perhaps 55 or 60, but after enduring nearly eight years of forced displacement it was hard to tell. He may have been only 40. The official pointed at the Rohingya teachers’ neatly tied and pressed longyi—a formal Burmese sarong—and spoke in the mutually intelligible Chittagonian dialect with an aggressive tone.

My UN colleague, who translated from Chittagonian to English for me, said the official was upset that the teacher dressed like ‘an illiterate fisherman’. He asked the teacher how he expected his students or their parents to respect him if he dressed this way and talked ‘like a Rohingya’ rather than an educated man. He admonished the teacher in front of the class, stating that if wore the longyi again he would lose his job; an interesting threat considering that refugee teachers are classed as ‘volunteer facilitators’ and contracted by the UN’s implementing partners rather than the Bangladesh Government.

The Bangladeshi official then reminded the teacher and students that they were supposed to be learning and speaking in Burmese, not Rohingya. He said they were using the Myanmar Curriculum so the Myanmar government would accept them again. This way, he opined, they could leave Bangladesh and return to Myanmar more civilized than their parents were before they left.

He then turned to the class and asked, in English this time, whether the students were prepared to go home. “Yes…” about one third of the students responded, disoriented by the back and forward between languages.

I caught the teacher's eye and mouthed “I am so sorry” to him. He brought his right hand to his heart in a Rohingya gesture of acknowledgement.

At this moment the official pointed to two of the five girls and asked them to stand. “Can you count to 50 in Burmese?”, he asked in English. The first girl counted to 10 and stopped. The second girl then started to count from ten, but the official interrupted. Again in English, he asked the first girl why she could not count. She looked at the ground and did not respond.

Without invitation, the second girl started to count again but the official instructed them to sit. The first girl wiped her eyes.

Switching back to Chittagonian, he admonished the Rohingya teacher again, reminding him to dress professionally. He also asked why his students could not count.

After almost eight years of forced displacement most Rohingya children have never heard Burmese, let alone set foot on Myanmar soil. Following the 2021 military coup, the situation in Myanmar was now worse than it was in 2017 when the Rohingya exodus took place. The possibility of a safe return has become increasingly slim.

The official turned and walked towards me in an attempt to leave. I did not make way but took the chance to re-introduce myself. In a feeble attempt to assert some accountability I said I am a researcher from Columbia University, in New York. With a limp and lingering handshake he looked me over and replied “very good.” But really I think he meant “so what?”

Before we departed for the next learning center, I waited in the SUV as two of my UN colleagues spoke with the official outside the entrance. The conversation seemed tense; the official looked incensed.

When they returned to the SUV I asked my colleagues if they were speaking about the official’s abhorrent treatment of the Rohingya teacher and his students. They laughed and said that “no, he refused to leave until we gave him an envelope”. I asked what an ‘envelope’ was. “It’s money… for showing up.”

Like my international colleague the night before, they were taken aback by my naïveté. They confirmed that “we didn’t give it to him of course, we can't, it is UN policy.” So I asked how he responded: “he threatened to close the school.”

Within a 20 minute window I saw so much of what my jaded international colleague had stressed. Beneath the surface and beyond the glossy annual reports that I read, an insidious form of violence and dispossession played out.