Some refugees described the violence they experienced while in Myanmar and their fears about going back; as earlier research (Xchange, 2018: 37) found, ‘most people’s fears can be seen to be derived from their previously lived or witnessed traumatic experiences, including rape, torture, and the murder of adults and children, among other incidents’. One man we interviewed, in his late fifties, said that he did not want to go back to Myanmar currently ‘because the military killed a lot of Rohingya people and this fear is still carrying in our mind and we are thinking that if we will go back to Myanmar either today or tomorrow the military will attack us again and we don’t want to face that another time’. A widow we spoke to with five children shared similar concerns: she described her husband and small children being killed and said there was nothing for her in Myanmar – no matter what, she did not want to return. 3.3.2  Options if they do not return We also asked refugees where they would want to live if they were not able to return to Myanmar in the next 5–10 years. Of those who took part in the quantitative survey, 79% wanted to stay in their current camp with their family and those they currently lived with. The qualitative research confirmed these results. Figure 2: Where Rohingya refugees would want to live if they were not able to return to Myanmar in the next 5–10 years Stay in the camps Live in the host community in and around Cox’s Bazar Somewhere else in Bangladesh with yoru family Resettled in another country with your family Other 2% 3% 7% 9% 79% When asked why they wanted to stay in the camps, refugees said they felt settled where they were, close to relatives and people they knew, and did not want the disruption of moving again. Some explained they had never travelled from the area around their home since coming to Bangladesh – during a focus group in Shamlapur, one woman said ‘Since we have come here from Myanmar 15 years ago I have never seen anything outside Shamlapur. Before we didn’t know anything about other areas, that’s why we have never gone outside Shamlapur, and we didn’t have enough transport fare which is why we couldn’t go outside. Now there are checkpoints and the military wouldn’t allow us to pass. The furthest any of us have gone is Shamlapur market and nearby there’. Refugees also cited mutually understood language, cultural familiarity and established relationships with those in the local community as being reasons to stay: one man said ‘here in the camp the locals are cooperative to us so that’s why I want to live here’; another said ‘If we will move from here anywhere in Bangladesh we will not be able to adjust because the local language here is similar. Their language is similar so we are adjusted here and we can easily understand what the locals want. We are familiar to the locals and the locals are familiar to us’. Few refugees said that they wanted to stay where they were because they felt their living conditions would improve. Rather, the status quo was preferred to the uncertainty and risks of change. One woman at a focus group in Shamlapur said she was worried that if she was registered as a refugee she would be sent back to Myanmar, and she did not want to go. One elderly woman said that she had heard that refugees could be relocated to an island (Bhashan Char), but did not want to go. Refugees have so far been highly reluctant to move there: as Antara (2019) writes, ‘The assurance of a relatively-comfortable life on the remote island, made by the Bangladeshi Government, is not enough to convince them. Most Rohingya refugees are unwilling to relocate there as they fear death by starvation, floods, and a lack of humanitarian aid’. As it stands, the possibility of being sent to an isolated island like Bhashan Char exemplifies the very real concerns Rohingya refugees have about moving from where they are currently. For the few who wanted to live elsewhere in Bangladesh, this was mostly to escape overcrowding or their destitute situation in the camps, because they had family living elsewhere or because they could envision a better future elsewhere. One 35-year-old woman in Unchiprang said ‘I would like to stay in Cox’s Bazar. In town. It is a bit congested here. The Humanitarian Policy Group 15