Dhaka: Inside the crowded camps of a coastal Bangladeshi district, where makeshift shelters are home to over 1 million refugees, a new center aims to preserve the heritage of the Rohingya people, an entire generation of whom has been growing up disconnected from their historical roots and cultural identity.
Funded by Bangladeshi authorities in late February, the Rohang Heritage Center is housed in one of the small bamboo huts in Camp 6. The modest space is filled with documents, photographs, historical maps, and recordings preserving the Rohingya language.
“In total, more than 200 items are currently on display at the heritage center,” Mizanur Rahman, refugee relief and repatriation commissioner in Cox’s Bazar, told Arab News.
“The items have been collected from old newspaper clippings, books published on Rohingya history, and various historical documents. These materials were brought by Rohingyas who managed to carry them while fleeing to Bangladesh.”
A predominantly Muslim ethnic minority, the Rohingya have lived for centuries in Myanmar’s western Rakhine State but were stripped of their citizenship in the 1980s. Since then, many have fled to neighboring Bangladesh, with about 700,000 arriving in 2017, after a military crackdown in their native state.
Nearly 1.3 million of them are currently cramped inside 33 camps in Cox’s Bazar district, where they have limited access to education.
Despite multiple attempts from Bangladeshi authorities, a UN-backed repatriation and resettlement process of the Rohingya has been failing to take off for the past few years.
Efforts have been stalled by armed conflict in Myanmar since the military junta seized power in 2021. Since 2024, the situation has been further complicated by fighting in Rakhine between junta troops and the Arakan Army, a powerful local ethnic militia.
While the repatriation remains uncertain, Bangladeshi authorities continue to prepare for it, and the cultural memory center is a part of the process.
“We plan to help the younger generation reconnect with their ethnicity and cultural heritage,” Rahman said.
“The Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar have been living here for at least nine years, and for some, as long as 33 years. Many in the younger generation know little about their ethnicity, the cultural heritage of Arakan (Rakhine State), their homeland, or the broader political situation in Myanmar.”
The center is operated by Rohingya volunteers and Gazi Shariful Hasan, administrator of Camp 6, who initiated the project. “This is the first initiative of its kind in the camp,” he said.
“Our main objective was to collect civil documents issued by the Myanmar government that recognized them as Rohingya — specifically those issued before 1989, the year their citizenship rights were withdrawn. We have collected these documents.”
Before 1989, official documents issued by the Myanmar government identified the community as Rohingya. However, following the 1982 Citizenship Law, which recognized 135 ethnic groups but excluded the Rohingya, references to them were gradually removed from official records and state publications.
In the years that followed, the community was increasingly and systematically referred to in official discourse as “Bengali Muslims.”
“We have gathered materials and records relating to educated and politically influential members of the Rohingya community within Myanmar’s national political landscape. Notably, there were Rohingya members of parliament before 1980,” Hasan told Arab News.
“Of course, no government would allow foreign nationals to serve in its parliament, which indicates that the Myanmar government previously recognized this ethnic population.”
The center also displays the material and intellectual history of the Rohingya, much of which has been erased by the Myanmar military in a process the UN has referred to as ethnic cleansing.
“We have also attempted to document the biographies of Rohingya Islamic scholars both in Myanmar and abroad ... In the past, even the chief imam of the Madinah Mosque was a Rohingya scholar, and his sermons were broadcast on television during the Hajj season,” Hasan said.
Another exhibition features 25 mosques built in Rakhine State in the early 19th century. Their photographs were sourced from an old album. Most of the mosques have since been destroyed, but the photographic documentation preserves them — and the historical reality of the region, Hasan said.
To the new Rohingya generation, he hoped it would “convey that they have a significant political past.”
