MINNEAPOLIS: Former Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo vividly remembers receiving a call around midnight from a community activist. The caller told him to watch a video spreading on social media of a white officer pinning a Black man to the ground, despite his fading pleas of “I can’t breathe.”
The dying man was George Floyd. The officer was Derek Chauvin. And Arradondo was the city’s first Black police chief.
“It was absolutely gut-wrenching,” Arradondo, 58, recalled in an interview ahead of the fifth anniversary of Floyd’s murder.
What he saw conflicted with what his own people had told him about the deadly encounter, and he knew immediately it would mean changes for his department and city. But he acknowledged he didn’t immediately foresee how deeply Floyd’s death would reverberate in the US and around the world.
“I served for 32 years,” he said. “But there’s no doubt May 25th, 2020, is a defining moment for me in my public service career.”
The video shows Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck, pinning him to the pavement outside a convenience store where Floyd had tried to use a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes. Chauvin maintained the pressure for 9-1/2 minutes despite pleas from onlookers to stop, even after an off-duty firefighter tried to intervene and another officer said he couldn’t find a pulse.
‘Remnants of pain and anger’
Arradondo sat for the interview in a public library that was heavily damaged in the unrest that followed Floyd’s death. It’s on Lake Street, a major artery that saw some of the worst destruction, a street that he says still bears “remnants of the pain and anger of what occurred five years ago.”
Just down the block, there’s the empty shell of a police station that was torched during the riots. And within sight is a Target store and a Cub Foods supermarket that were looted. Storefronts remain boarded up. While some businesses were rebuilt, empty lots sit where others did not.
Arradondo still stands by his and Mayor Jacob Frey’s decision to abandon the Third Precinct and let it burn. Protesters breached the building, and police — who were spread thin — didn’t have the resources to hold it. So he ordered his officers to evacuate.
“During the most significant crisis we’ve ever experienced, arguably in the state, when it’s life or death, I’ve got to go on the side of keeping people alive and safe,” he said.
Police reform
Arradondo subsequently helped launch an overhaul of policing in the city despite a resistant police culture and a powerful officers union. He testified against Chauvin in his 2021 murder trial, a rare breach of the “blue wall” that traditionally protects officers from being held accountable for wrongdoing.
Five years on, Arradondo, who retired in 2022, said he believes law enforcement agencies nationwide have made progress on police accountability — albeit incremental progress — and that police chiefs and sheriffs now move faster to hold officers responsible for egregious misconduct.
Arradondo was promoted to chief in 2017, and his elevation was greeted with hope among local African Americans who affectionately called him “Rondo.” But his department had a reputation for being too quick to use force and many were angry about police killing young Black men in Minnesota and beyond.
Arradondo said he wishes he had made more changes to the police department before Floyd was killed.
“I would have pushed harder and sooner at trying to dismantle some of the toxic culture that allowed that indifference to exist that evening, on May 25th, 2020,” he said. “I certainly would have invested more time elevating the voices in our community that had been pleading with police departments for decades to listen to us and change.”
Making amends
Arradondo just published a book, “Chief Rondo: Securing Justice for the Murder of George Floyd,” that explores leadership, justice and race, the broader impacts of policing, and the challenges of working within a flawed system. He closes it with a letter dedicated to Floyd’s daughter, Gianna.
“I never had an opportunity to meet Gianna, but I wanted her to know that, even though I was not out there that evening, at that intersection when her father was pleading for help, that I heard him, and I was going to do everything I could to bring him justice,” he said.
He wanted to say the words that she has not heard from the four former officers who were convicted for their roles in George Floyd’s death:
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for your father being taken from you.”

DHAKA: Bangladeshi authorities on Saturday raised the alarm over increasing numbers of Rohingya refugees taking risky boat journeys to flee the coastal district of Cox’s Bazar. 

Bangladesh hosts more than 1.3 million Rohingya Muslims, who, for decades, have fled neighboring Myanmar to escape persecution, especially during a military crackdown in 2017. The majority of them live in Cox’s Bazar in eastern Bangladesh, which has become the world’s largest refugee settlement.

Over the years, humanitarian conditions in Cox’s Bazar’s cramped refugee camps have been deteriorating, with aid continuously declining since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nearly one in five people attempting to flee the settlement by sea have been reported as dead or missing so far in 2025, according to UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency.

Two boats which capsized on May 9 and 10 were carrying a total of 514 Rohingya refugees from Cox’s Bazar and Myanmar’s Rakhine state, according to UNHCR, which estimates that at least 427 of them died.

“The ongoing funding crisis for the Rohingya is severely hampering the lives of Rohingya in the camps in Cox’s Bazar, which fueled the desperation for the perilous sea journey,” Mizanur Rahman, refugee relief and repatriation commissioner in Cox’s Bazar, told Arab News.

“Every aspect of their lives — food, livelihood, health, and so on — has been severely impacted. Most importantly, it has darkened their future also. They are at a loss what to do. The uncertainty in their lives triggered many of them to (undertake) the risky sea journeys towards unknown destinations.”

Over the past few years, UNHCR has documented thousands of Rohingya refugees embarking on deadly sea journeys from Bangladesh — and, to a lesser extent, from Myanmar — and reported hundreds dying or going missing.

The Rohingya, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority, lived for centuries in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state but were stripped of their citizenship in the 1980s. Since then, many of them have fled to Bangladesh, where they are almost entirely reliant on humanitarian aid.

Despite multiple attempts by Bangladeshi authorities, the UN-backed repatriation and resettlement process of the Rohingya has so far failed to take off.

In 2025, aid for the Rohingya faced another cut after US President Donald Trump’s administration announced it was eliminating most US aid globally. Washington was the largest donor of foreign aid to the Rohingya last year, contributing $301 million — 55 percent of all foreign aid received.

UNHCR requires $383 million in 2025 to “stabilize the lives of refugees and their host communities” across Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, as well as those displaced inside Myanmar. But, as of Friday, it had secured only 30 percent of that amount.

The deadly boat accidents earlier this month may have been fueled by “extreme desperation,” UNHCR said, highlighting that it occurred during the monsoon season, which is a particularly dangerous time for boat travel in the region.

“The dire humanitarian situation, exacerbated by funding cuts, is having a devastating impact on the lives of Rohingya, with more and more resorting to dangerous journeys to seek safety, protection and a dignified life for themselves and their families,” said Hai Kyung Jun, UNHCR director for Asia and the Pacific.

“The latest tragedy is a chilling reminder that access to meaningful protection, especially in countries of first asylum, as well as responsibility sharing and collective efforts along sea routes, are essential to saving lives.”