TERRORISM DILEMMAS AND DEMOCRACY attack on Myanmarese government forces on 9 October 2016 and 25 August 2017. A large number of Rohingya refugees have migrated into Bangladesh as a direct result of these three decades of persecution. While the actual numbers remain uncertain, in October 2012 the UNHCR reported there were 28,000 Rohingya living in the Nayapara and Kutupalong refugee settlements in Cox’s Bazaar, with more than 200,000 others living outside in a ‘refugee-like situation’ (UNHCR, 2012). Most of these outside refugees had migrated prior to the 2012 violence but had not benefited ‘from legal status or documentation’ since the Bangladeshi government suspended refugee registration in mid-1992, resulting in ‘protection gaps and increased vulnerability’. In April 2013, Human Rights Watch wrote ‘…violence since June (2012 had) displaced at least 125,000 Rohingya and other Muslims, and a smaller number of Arakanese, to internally displaced person (IDP) camps,’ (HRW, 2012, p 6) in Myanmar. Bangladesh’s decision to close its border at that time meant few Rohingya were able to seek formal refuge inside Bangladesh. In August 2018, the UNHCR claimed 723,000 Rohingya had fled to Bangladesh since August 25, 2017 adding to the 307,500 Rohingya refugees already living in Bangladesh (UNHCR, 2018). The European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations October 2017 factsheet noted ‘over 530,000 Rohingyas have fled across the border into Bangladesh’, following the August 2017 violence, adding to 87,000 who had already fled in the initial resumption of violence in October 2016 (European Commission, 2017). The persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar and their precarious refuge in Bangladesh is a product of socio-political othering that has reduced the Rohingya to one of the largest stateless communities in the world, not belonging to either Myanmar or Bangladesh. Their statelessness is best understood through a flawed historicity that views the border between the modern nation states of Bangladesh and Burma as historically enduring. Based on an understanding of generations of human movement across porous and shifting borders, and the historical ebb-and-flow of religio-cultural identity among heterogeneous peoples of the region, this article posits that seeking refuge in Bangladesh is not only a fundamental human right, but one that is backed by a centuries-long historical precedence. This article also argues that the othering of Rohingya refugees frequently observed in Bangladesh’s largest circulating English language newspaper The Daily Star, cannot be historically validated or defended through the normative rationale of a global Fourth Estate press. This study looks at coverage of the Rohingya in a very specific space within the Bangaladeshi press, namely the county’s largest circulating English language newspaper, The Daily Star. Considering news media can simultaneously mould public opinion and be a reflection of public opinion, the narrow focus on just one publication is selected to explore how the English-educated elite may be both PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 25 (1 & 2) 2019 261