TERRORISM DILEMMAS AND DEMOCRACY middlemen for fake documents, but it must be argued that the newspaper has the option of framing the Rohingya as outright criminals or as the desperate clientele of Bangladeshi criminals. The majority of Rohingya, even those recognised as legitimate refugees have no legal refugee documentation and are not eligible to obtain Bangladeshi passports. As stateless people sans passports they are unable to obtain travel documents, preventing them from seeking foreign employment abroad while simultaneously unable to secure legitimate employment in Bangladesh or Myanmar, effectively relegating them to continuing cycles of poverty in both countries. Refugees as a social contagion: ‘The newly arrived Rohingyas are now mingling with the local populace, and unless we control this situation, it will become a serious problem for us in the future,’ The Daily Star editorial warned on 6 September 2017. This narrative frame is by no means new. ‘Rohingyas look similar to Bangladesh people living in the southeast and speak in a dialect which is close to that of Bangladesh people on the border. They can easily mingle with the local people,’ a similarly worded Daily Star opinion piece noted on 20 June 2012 (Ur Rashid, June 20, 2012). In claiming ‘unregistered refugees’ are ‘mingling’ with locals, the reports infer such mingling is harmful to the local population, suggesting Bangladesh prefers refugees to be corralled and insulated from the native population. This is a softer framing of what Haynes, Devereux, & Breen (2004) define as a ‘social deviancy’ frame. This social deviancy or social contagion frame adds a harder edge to stories that would traditionally be covered as ‘tug-at-the-heart-strings’ human-interest articles. In one such example, in a front-page report headlined ‘Illegal stay thru’ [sic] dubious means’, published on 10 July 2012, journalist Julfikar Ali Manik wrote; A group of policemen last month came across a girl at the entrance to Nayapara Rohingya refugee camp… She wanted to enter the camp ‘to meet her sister’. She claimed to be a Bangladeshi, showing her birth certificate. Suspicious, the law enforcers challenged her claims. Faced with questioning, the girl finally admitted to being a Rohingya Muslim living in the area. The report explores the issue of the Rohingya procuring false documentation including Bangladeshi birth registration for refugee children. The government official who had ‘unwittingly’ registered the aforementioned Rohingya girl’s birth claimed he’d simply made a mistake. Blaming oversight rather than the likelihood of corruption he stated, ‘We don’t know all those who come to us for birth certificates’. Presented as evidence of the Rohingya damaging Bangladesh’s social fabric, the report ignores the difficulties faced by long-term Rohingya refugee children in accessing education and healthcare. The Rohingya are also disproportionally cited in connection with smuggling PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 25 (1 & 2) 2019 271