A rare, coordinated campaign by Rohingya Gen-Z is challenging refugee camp power structures after threats, intimidation, and a death at sea.
For years, power in the Rohingya camps has flowed in one direction -- downwards. Armed actors, refugee camp authorities, and security agencies exercised that power. Refugees had to navigate, endure, and survive.
What is happening now is different.
The camps in question are in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh -- the largest refugee settlement in the world, where over a million Rohingya live under tight administrative control, with restricted movement and no meaningful access to independent justice.
Within this environment, the Rohingya Committee for Peace and Repatriation(RCPR) has emerged as a prominent actor. It presents itself as a platform for unity and repatriation.
But its rise has been closely tied, according to Rohingya community members and observers, to the interests of the authorities, particularly in amplifying repatriation messaging at a time when returns remain politically sensitive and practically unfeasible.
At the centre of RCPR is Dil Mohammed, a figure with a deeply contested reputation in the camps. He is a latecomer to the camps whose rise has been facilitated by Bangladeshi security actors and camp structures.
Multiple testimonies from Rohingya residents describe a past that includes collaboration with Myanmar military actors and involvement in smuggling and coercive practices.
In the camps, he and his network are widely associated -- again, according to community accounts -- with intimidation, pressure, and links to recruitment dynamics tied to armed actors.
RCPR rejects these characterizations. It claims to have reduced violence in the camps and to have brought a degree of stability between rival armed groups.
That contrast, between claim and experience, is precisely what is now being challenged.
For the youth speaking out, the issue is not what RCPR says it is. It is how power is exercised, and who pays the price. The tragedy of Mohammed Ullah has become the lens through which this power is now being scrutinized.
In the days following the death of Mohammed Ullah, a young Rohingya from Camp 7 who fled after threats and is now missing at sea, Rohingya youth have organized a coordinated campaign demanding accountability.
This is not the usual murmur of discontent. It is structured, deliberate, and public.
Who was Mohammed Ullah?
Mohammed Ullah was not a militant or a political figure. By multiple accounts, he was an educated young man who spoke out.
After a social media post referencing Dil Mohammed, he reportedly became the target of threats. According to testimonies gathered from family members, individuals identifying themselves as linked to RCPR confronted him directly.
One of them named himself as Maulvi Edris. They attempted to seize his phone. They failed only because a crowd gathered.
A few months later, Mohammed Ullah fled. He would not return.
In April 2026, a boat carrying Rohingya refugees capsized in the Andaman Sea. Around 250 people are believed to have died. Mohammed Ullah was among them.
His death fits a now familiar pattern -- threats, fear, flight, the sea. But the response to his death does not.
The Gen-Z campaign
A new generation, raised within the confines of the camps but connected to the digital world, is doing the unthinkable: It is speaking back.
What started as a mourning of a peer has transformed into a structured, public, and historic challenge to the camp's entrenched power structures.
They have launched a petition calling for an independent investigation into the threats against Mohammed Ullah and the role of RCPR leadership, including Dil Mohammed.
They have created coordinated Facebook profile graphics. They are writing to international organizations. They are planning silent protests.
Their language is careful, almost legalistic. It speaks of “credible and transparent investigation,” “accountability,” and “protection mechanisms.” But beneath that language is something more significant: A refusal.
They are refusing the rules of camp politics -- the expectation that criticism must not arise and that threats should be absorbed.
That those with connections to armed groups and to the authorities are untouchable. For years, even diaspora voices have often calibrated their speech around these constraints. What is emerging now is different.
It is coming from inside the camps, from those who live with the consequences. And as such, this movement is forcing a transition from survival-based adaptation to political advocacy.
At the same time, Mohammed Ullah’s family is being visited. His elder brother reports multiple visits by individuals identifying themselves as linked to National Security Intelligence, alongside others who do not identify themselves at all.
They ask questions: When did he leave? Who threatened him? What did he say?
His phone was taken, unlocked, searched, and returned. No receipt. No documentation.
The behaviour, he says, was calm. But the effect is not. “Many people are coming,” he says. “They do not introduce themselves… This has created fear among us.”
The contradiction
This is the contradiction at the heart of the camps. On one side, a youth-led campaign demanding accountability for threats and intimidation.
On the other, a system that continues to operate through opaque visits, informal questioning, and the quiet collection of information. No formal investigation has been announced into the threats against Mohammed Ullah.
The Rohingya Gen-Z petition goes further. It raises allegations about intimidation, coercion, and abuse of power linked to figures within RCPR.
It calls for accountability and protection for those who speak out. These are not new claims in private conversations within the camps. What is new is that they are now being written down, and circulated.
As the youth campaign has gathered momentum, there has been a response.
Dil Mohammed released an audio, then a statement, and then held a full-scale rally. Taken together, Dil Mohammed and the Rohingya Committee for Peace and Repatriation statement did not just respond -- they escalated the matter.
In the audio, critics are reduced to “15 or 16 individuals” spreading “misinformation” and warned that “no one will escape the consequences.”
In the formal statement, those same voices are recast as opportunists fabricating claims for the purposes of being resettled and, more starkly, as part of an “anti-repatriation movement.”
RCPR’s objective is clear - to shrink the dissent, discredit it, and attach motive to it.
What is striking is not just the aggression, but the absence of any direct response to the central allegation that Mohammed Ullah was threatened by Dil Mohammed’s associates. There is no acknowledgement of testimony, and no call for an investigation.
Instead, the response is to redraw the lines: Critics are liars and opportunists, and dissent becomes betrayal of the Rohingya cause itself.
It is a defensive power reacting to a collective, organized movement it cannot easily silence.
For the first time in years, a segment of the Rohingya community is not just reacting to events, it is attempting to shape them.
The death of Mohammed Ullah has acted as a catalyst, breaking a cycle of silence that had long been enforced through fear.
Regardless of the immediate outcome, the fact that a section of the Rohingya youth is now actively attempting to shape their own future, rather than simply reacting to the decisions of others, marks a new, precarious, and pivotal chapter in the history of the camps.
“This is not the first time youth have been threatened for speaking out,” one organizer says. “For years, many remained silent because of fear.”
Mohammed Ullah’s case, they say, broke that silence. “To us, this was not just an accident. It was the result of sustained threats and pressure that forced him to flee. In that sense, it is a form of indirect killing.” The risks are not theoretical.
“There have been coordinated efforts to silence youth voices… people are collecting names. I have received threats,” another organizer says. “But remaining silent would mean accepting injustice.” They reject the attempt to minimize the movement.
“This is not a small group. Thousands of Rohingya youth are speaking out. It only appears small because many are afraid to reveal their identities.”
And they are clear about what they want.
“We do not want revenge -- we want justice, safety, and dignity. This is about ensuring that no young Rohingya is forced into silence, fear, or a deadly journey just to survive.”
Whether this campaign leads to accountability, or is absorbed, silenced, or redirected, remains to be seen. But one thing is already clear. Something has shifted.
Shafiur Rahman is a journalist and documentary filmmaker focusing on the politics of refugee management in South and Southeast Asia. He writes the Rohingya Refugee News newsletter.