Since the military coup in Myanmar on February 1, 2021, the country is fully controlled by the same generals who led the campaign of mass atrocities against the Rohingya in 2017, making the prospect of a safe and dignified return ever more distant. Quarantined on Bhasan Char, Separated from Families The first refugees to be housed on Bhasan Char were brought there after they were rescued at sea. In May 2020, the Bangladesh navy responded to international calls to rescue two boats carrying 306 Rohingya refugees that had been lost at sea. Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thai, and Malaysian authorities had earlier refused to allow the refugees to land. That Bangladesh rescued the refugees while its neighbors ignored them is both commendable and characteristic of Bangladesh’s efforts to provide safe haven to Rohingya refugees. A month earlier, the Bangladesh coast guard had rescued another 390 Rohingya refugees on a boat that had reportedly been turned away by Malaysia. The refugees were starving, dehydrated, and ill after drifting at sea for months before ending up back at the Bangladesh coast. Several had died, their bodies dumped into the sea. Yet, after bringing the 306 ashore, instead of reuniting the refugees with their families in Cox’s Bazar as they had done earlier, the authorities brought them to Bhasan Char. Officials initially said that the refugees were only being held temporarily to quarantine from any potential spread in the camps of the virus that causes Covid-19. But a full year later, the refugees are still being held on the island against their will. Yusuf Ali, 43, who lives in Cox’s Bazar and whose two daughters are being held on Bhasan Char, said, “the CiC [Camp-in-Charge official] told us that our daughters would never be returned to us here. They said, ‘You still have time to choose to go there [to Bhasan Char], otherwise forget about your children.’” After pleading for months to be returned to their families in Cox’s Bazar, a group of refugees went on hunger strike in September 2020. In video accounts received by Human Rights Watch, one Rohingya woman on hunger strike said: “We don’t want food, what we want is to go back to our families.… It’s better to die than to live here.” In response, Bangladesh authorities beat some of the refugees with tree branches and rubber sticks. 5 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | JUNE 2021