Rohingya who moved to island in Bangladesh are learning job skills, says Japanese charity chief

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Japan's Nippon Foundation will spend $2 million to help move tens of thousands more Rohingya refugees to a remote island in Bangladesh and provide them with skills training, the charity's chairman said.

Speaking to The Associated Press on Sunday after a visit to Bhashan Char, Yohei Sasakawa praised the support the government has provided to refugees on the island and said it's a step toward returning them to Myanmar.

Some 700,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar for Bangladesh after August 2017, when the military in Buddhist-majority Myanmar began a harsh crackdown following an attack by insurgents. The crackdown included rapes, killings and the torching of thousands of homes, and was termed ethnic cleansing by global rights groups and the U.N., while the United States called it genocide.

Efforts to repatriate refugees to Myanmar under a 2017 agreement meditated by China have failed at least twice, and seem only more distant as the security situation worsens. Fighting has spread across much of Myanmar as the ruling junta loses ground to rebel and separatist groups in the country's long-running civil war.

Sasakawa, who also serves as Japan’s Special Envoy for National Reconciliation in Myanmar, said that they'll need jobs training to return: “After their return to Myanmar, if they have no skill whatsoever, then they would end up living poorly in the country. So having the skill training in Bhasan Char is going to help them greatly.”

The Nippon Foundation will fund moving some 40,000 Rohingya to the island, Sasakawa said.

While Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina says the refugees will not be forced to return to Myanmar, she's urged the international community to put pressure on the Buddhist-majority country to make safe return possible. More than a million Rohingya refugees live in crowded camps near the coastal city of Cox's Bazaar along the border with Myanmar.

Bangladesh's effort to relocate refugees to Bhasan Char — a low-lying island that was sometimes wholly submerged during monsoons — was initially opposed by the U.N. and many refugees, but it's won acceptance as the first groups have settled in. An increasing number of Rohingya have agreed to make the move, and the U.N. and U.S. have committed funds to support the program.

“I was … quite impressed about how much support was given … in Bhasan Char island," Sasakawa said. “And that support was being provided from the Bangladesh government, although the government itself is experiencing a very difficult fiscal state.”

The government has built a 10-kilometer-long embankment to protect the island from flooding, he says, as well as schools, hospitals and mosques, powered by solar energy.

Sasakawa, who visited Myanmar more than 150 times in recent years, said that the ultimate solution to the Rohingya crisis is their repatriation, but Myanmar’s return to democracy is also important.

In Rakhine state, from where more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims fled to Bangladesh in 2017 amid chaos, rebel group Arakan Army has been attacking the government forces seeking autonomy.

Sasakawa said that the ethnic conflicts that have divided Myanmar for decades could be resolved under a return to democracy. “They wish down the road in the future to build a united Myanmar, meaning that the ethnic armed groups have no intention of becoming independent from Myanmar."

Sasakawa said the regional bloc ASEAN — of which Myanmar is a member — should take the central role in engaging Myanmar.

Japanese philanthropic group Nippon Foundation's Chairman Sasakawa Yohei, center, poses for photographs with Rohingya refugees during a visit to Bhasan Char island in the Bay of Bengal, in Bangladesh, Saturday, April 6, 2024. Japan's Nippon Foundation will spend $2 million to help move tens of thousands more Rohingya refugees to the remote island in Bangladesh and provide them with skills training, Sasakawa said. (Nippon Foundation via AP)

Rohingya refugees at one of their camps at Bhashan Char island, Bangladesh, Saturday, April 6, 2024. Japan's Nippon Foundation will spend $2 million to help move tens of thousands more Rohingya refugees to the remote island in Bangladesh and provide them with skills training, the charity's chairman said. (Nippon Foundation via AP)

Rohingya refugees engage in a fishing activity at Bhashan Char island in the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh, Saturday, April 6, 2024. Japan's Nippon Foundation will spend $2 million to help move tens of thousands more Rohingya refugees to the remote island in Bangladesh and provide them with skills training, the charity's chairman said. (Nippon Foundation via AP)

Japanese philanthropic group Nippon Foundation's Chairman Sasakawa Yohei, carries a lamb during a visit to Bhasan Char island in the Bay of Bengal, where thousands of Rohingya refugees are living in Bangladesh, Saturday, April 6, 2024. Japan's Nippon Foundation will spend $2 million to help move tens of thousands more Rohingya refugees to a remote island in Bangladesh and provide them with skills training, Sasakawa said. (Nippon Foundation via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — Paramount Global on Monday announced that Bob Bakish is stepping down as CEO of the film, television and multimedia company.

Bakish will be replaced by a troika of executives who will form a new “Office of the CEO.” The group includes George Cheeks, the CEO of CBS; Chris McCarthy, CEO of Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios and Paramount Media Networks; and Brian Robbins, the CEO of Paramount Pictures.

The company said Cheeks, McCarthy and Robbins will work closely with Chief Financial Officer Naveen Chopra and the board of directors. Among the issues the new CEO trio must face are a reported $11 billion offer from private-equity firm Apollo Global to acquire the studio, which produces films and television programs and runs the streaming service Paramount+.

There have also been reports of a possible merger with Skydance, David Ellison’s media company that has helped produce such Paramount releases as “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning.”

Co-CEOs are rare but far from unknown; roughly 100 public companies such as Salesforce, Netflix, Chipotle Mexican Grill, SAP and Oracle have all had co-CEOs for various periods of time over the past quarter century. A 2022 study published in the Harvard Business Review found that among 87 co-CEO led companies, dual leadership coincided with better-than-average stock performance. Roughly 60% of these companies outperformed.

CEO troikas, however, are far rarer, and their organizational issues can be much more complex. For instance, instead of being forced to compromise the way co-CEOs often are, two members of a troika can just outvote a third.

Paramount also released earnings for the quarter ended March 31 on Monday, reporting a net loss attributable to Paramount of $554 million, or 87 cents per share, a reduction from a $1.1 billion net loss, or $1.74 per share, in the same year-earlier period. The company reported revenue of $7.66 billion, a 5.8% increase from $7.27 billion a year earlier.

The earnings in the latest quarter, adjusted for one-time gains and costs, came to 62 cents per share. That topped expectations of 35 cents a share, according to a FactSet poll.

In what may have been a sly nod to the challenge it faces, Paramount closed out the Monday conference call in which it described the CEO changes and earnings with the theme to “Mission: Impossible.”

FILE - Paramount CEO Bob Bakish speaks as he attends an interview during the Barron's Roundtable at the Fox Business Network, Aug. 5, 2022, in New York. Paramount Global on Monday, April 29, 2024, announced that Bakish is stepping down as CEO of the film, television and multimedia company. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez, File)