Bangladesh is planning to install barbed-wire fencing, guard towers and cameras around Rohingya refugee camps, raising fears of prison-like conditions in the already bleak settlements.

The move comes amid growing security concerns and rising impatience in Dhaka that no solution has been found to repatriate or rehouse some one million refugees who have fled from Burma’s Rakhine state to the Bangladeshi port of Cox’s Bazar, most during a murderous military crackdown in 2017.

"There are three large camps. We'll fence the three camps with barbed wires," Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told reporters this week.

"Watch towers and CCTV cameras" would also be set up to monitor activity in the Cox's Bazar district settlements, he added, according to AFP.

Tensions over the camps have increased since a repatriation bid to encourage refugees to return to Burma in August failed because of the minority’s fears that they would not be allowed back to their homes and would never be granted Burmese citizenship.