A confidential report prepared by an intelligence agency has suggested that the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army is responsible for the recent killings, attacks, and threats inside Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar.

The report also found firearms being smuggled into Bangladeshi territory through the Tambru border in Bandarban and recommended the setting up of a police camp near zero point in the area, 10 kilometres from Kutupalang Rohingya camps in Ukhia.

Analysing 30 attacks that took place between August and October this year, the report stated that the ARSA was killing or injuring Rohingyas by shooting, hacking, and separating organs to create a reign of terror and cause serious concerns among the Rohingyas.

The agency sent the report to the home ministry in late October.

‘There are indications of the presence of a few ARSA members along the bordering area, and that is why we have sealed the border,’ home minister Asaduzzaman Khan  told New Age on Friday.

He said that drives inside the Rohingya camps were being conducted to identify the perpetrators of the recent murders.

A senior official of the agency said that they prepared the report in the wake of a growing number of crimes in the camps, which led to a tense situation.

The commanding officer of Border Guard Battalion-34, Lieutenant Colonel Mahedi Hossain Kabir, however, said that he was not aware of arms smuggling through the Tambru border.

The report also suggested round-the-clock closed-circuit camera monitoring inside the crucial points in the camps.

ARSA was targeting Majhi, sub-Majhi, volunteers, night guards, and even ordinary Rohingyas in the camps, according to the report.

ARSA member Sana Ullah hacked Armed Police Battalion constable Saidul Islam at Camp 7 on September 19.

It said that ARSA was extorting Rohingyas employed with local and international charities, the family members of expatriate Rohingyas, or traders in camps and establishing control over Yaba trade, ration items buying and selling syndicates and running an alternative justice system.

The report suggested that ARSA members were holding meetings at camp numbers 5, 6, 13, 17, and 18 while many ASRA members were holding their ‘secret meeting’ outside camps.

The report seen by New Age said that ARSA had connections with intelligence agencies in Myanmar, and their influence in the camps might pose a challenge to the capacities of the Bangladesh law enforcement agencies.

It reported that the ARSA created a group of 150 people inside the camps, and they were targeting Rohingya volunteers, who were sharing information with the APBn and members of intelligence agencies about the movements and activities of the criminal gangs.

The intelligence report stated that Rohingya leader Mohib Ullah was killed on September 29, 2021, inside the camps due to his ideological difference and protest against ARSA, while six Rohingyas—three teachers, two students, and a volunteer—were killed and 15 others injured in a fierce predawn attack on a madrassah-cum-mosque in October 2021 at a remote camp in Ukhia over the same reason.

The APBn launched a crackdown following the attack, but the recent conflict between the Myanmar Army and the rebel Arakan Army pushed many ARSA members gradually to Rohingya camps.

Another intelligence official said that ARSA, led by factional chief Ataullah Abu Ammar Jununi, was endorsing the attacks and that he was also targeting those who had been defying him.

APBn-8 alone detained 70 Rohingyas in their latest drive, named ‘operation root out’ and half of them were jailed by mobile court.

The drive came after two Rohingyas were killed in Camp 17 on October 27, bringing the total number of Rohingyas killed in the camps since mid-August to 17.

At a meeting on October 19, liberation war affairs minister AKM Mozammel Haque, who heads the cabinet committee on law and order, said that the government was worried about the growing criminal activities inside the Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar and asked security forces to intensify night patrolling.

Cox’s Bazar police superintendent Mahfuzul Islam said that they would take tougher action against organised criminal gangs.

Cox’s Bazar district police statistics show that 2,363 cases were filed between August 2017 and July 2022 against 4,979 Rohingyas.

Of the cases, 1,601 were filed against 2, 207 people in connection with drug possession, 95 against 431 people over murders, 84 against 124 people over rape or attempted rape allegations and 39 cases against 191 people on charges of abduction.

Until August 2022, police arrested 1,846 people in 1,470 cases in which they seized at least 1,422,54,500 Yaba tablets, among other drugs.

Following a military crackdown on Rohingyas on August 25, 2017, nearly 7,75,000 Rohingya women, men, and children fled Myanmar for Bangladesh, joining thousands of other Rohingyas who had sought and found refuge in the country in previous years.