A safe abode eludes Rohingya
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
Nurul Islam
THE long historical background of Arakan claims the existence of the world's most oppressed ethnic minority, Rohingya Muslims.
The Rohingyas are Muslims from the Mayu frontier area, the Buthidaung and Maungdaw township in the isolated province of Rakhine in western Myanmar, on the Naaf river. which demarcates the boundary between Myanmar and Bangladesh.
When Burma gained independence from the UK in 1948, the ethnic and religious groups first favoured joining Pakistan but later called for an autonomous region. The Myanmar government, however, has consistently refused to recognise the Rohingyas as citizens.
According to Amnesty International (AI), in 1978 more than 0.2 million Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh, following the Operation Nagamin by Myanmar army. It is claimed that most of them were eventually repatriated. But about 15,000 stayed back. In 1991, a second wave of about 25,000 Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh. Some of them later went to Malaysia, where they continue to be rounded up by immigration personnel. They are handed over to human traffickers at the Thai-Malaysia border.
The Rohingyas are the victims of religious and racial discrimination in Buddhist majority Myanmar. At least 50 per cent of the total Rohingya population was compelled to take refuge in other countries.
Without a comprehensive solution to this issue, there is no apparent end to this humanitarian crisis - either in countries where they seek asylum or Myanmar, the country of their origin. The members of the Rohingya community are persecuted in Myanmar. They are denied even the basic human rights. They are victims of systematic human rights abuse. Myanmar is bent on destroying the Rohingyas, a minority community.
Not considered citizens, Myanmar denies them passports. They are not allowed to travel from northern Rakhine province to other parts of Myanmar. They are also debarred from travelling one village to another within the state without permission.
The travel restrictions imposed by the government, debars the young from seeking education and employment opportunities, outside the province. The Rohingyas cannot marry unless they purchase marriage permits at high price.
For child births, a Rohingya has to pay high informal fines or suffer imprisonment. The policy of 'two children only' is applied on them. Since 1948, about 1.5 million Rohingyas have either been expelled or had to flee Myanmar to escape persecution. Most of them had to flee to Bangladesh, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Malaysia, where without any status, they remain vulnerable. Neither civil society organisations, nor the UN and other international organisations ever cared to properly address the issue over the last two decades.
Activist Chris Lewa of the Arakan Project, which advocates for the Rohingyas, said the Rohingya men's tales are numbingly familiar. They are subjected to "arbitrary taxation, forced labour, confiscation of land and religions persecution and compelled to build Buddhist villages in Muslim areas. In this situation a lot of people just hope to flee and find a better life somewhere else," Lewa said. The Myanmar military rulers, apparently would like all the Rohingyas to go abroad for good. Human rights workers say, that is why the military turns a blind eye to, or even encourages the smugglers who take the Rohingyas out. Human Rights Watch recently urged Myanmar's neighbours in South-East Asia to press the military to end their "brutal practices" against the Rohingyas. But the appeal, it is likely, fell on deaf ears.
The Rohingya Muslims flee their native land to escape persecution by their own government. They soon become victims of discrimination and harsh treatment wherever they reach, particularly in Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. First, they arrive in Bangladesh, before leaving for third countries including Thailand, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia.
They do it by procuring Bangladeshi passport. Nowadays, they are compelled to choose the risky sea-route to reach Malaysia via Thailand due to travel difficulties with Bangladeshi passport. The stateless Rohingyas in exile face all sorts of abuse.
Haziqah, a 27-year old female Rohingya refugee, told Irrawaddy News, "I've lost everything in my life and now I can only pray that I don't get sent back to Burma." from her half-built mud hut in the unofficial Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh. Before coming to the camp, she lived in the Bandarban Hill Tracts, with many other Myanmar refugees.
They all fled persecution in Myanmar. As she gave birth to a baby at the time, Haziqul was unable to work. She and her husband managed to survive on a meagre wage he earned doing odd jobs in the locality. But their hopes of a quasi-normal existence were crushed when BDR personnel, rounded up all the Rohingya refugees living there.
They were asked to proceed towards the border. She said that her husband was severely beaten. Ignoring the one-week-old baby in her arms, she said, she was pushed towards the border. When they reached the top of a bordering hill, they were pushed back to Myanmar. In the chaos, she was separated from her husband. Later, she heard that Nasaka, the Myanmar border guards had captured her husband. The stories of rough handling by Bangladesh Rifles are common for the new arrivals at the makeshift refugee camp. Like Haziqah, many other women were separated from their husbands.
Since August when tensions broke out between the two countries over Myanmar's erection of a border fence, arrests and forced repatriation of Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh increased dramatically.
In order to escape arrest, many have fled to unofficial camps, which, unlike the UNHCR camp next door, provide no food rations. The Bangladesh government refuses to accept as refugees, the Rohingyas who arrived in the country after 1991. Bangladesh labels them as illegal migrants, leaving them to fend for themselves.
These who manage to escape the 'push back' following eviction overcrowd the camps where too many refugees have to share whatever food is available. As the Bangladesh government does not recognise the refugees, the NGOs are unable to provide enough food for them. They are compelled to find work in the nearby localities. Following recent arrests at checkpoints they have come across on way to, and from, the workplace, many refugees are too afraid to leave the camp to find work.
According to an article written by Syed Neaz Ahmad, published in The Guardian (UK), about 3,000 Rohingya families in Saudi prisons are awaiting deportation. But, like the other Rohingya refugees, they have nowhere to go.
The Rohingyas were offered shelter in Saudi Arabia by the late King Faisal. But, after Faisal's death, the rules changed, for which about 3,000 of Burmese Muslim families in prisons in Mecca and Jeddah, await deportation.
Women and children are held in separate but nearby prisons. The men contact their wives and children over mobile phones. But the question is what would the eventual destination for these stateless refugees.
Myanmar does not want them. A highly overpopulated Bangladesh has no ability to shelter and feed the refugees.
The Rohingyan refugees in Bangladesh are having a tough time. Other Muslim countries remain silent spectators. Pakistan's offer to accept some of the Rohingyas, awaiting deportation from Saudi prisons, is seen as a mere diplomatic exercise.
Islamabad's persistent refusal to accept 0.3 million stranded Pakistanis, living in camps in Bangladesh, only breeds suspicion among the Rohingyas in Saudi prison, about the Pakistani offer.
The UNHCR spokeswoman in Asia, Kitty Mckinsey says, "No country has really taken up their cause. Look at the Palestinians, for example. They have a lot of countries on their side, unlike the Rohingyas." The late King Faisal's decision to offer them a permanent abode in Saudi Arabia was a noble gesture. However, subsequent Saudi rulers are reluctant to accept the Myanmar Muslims. A majority of about 2.5 Myanmar Muslims in Saudi Arabia live in Mecca's slums (Naqqasha and Kudai). They sell vegetables, sweep streets and work as porters, carpenters and unskilled workers. The fortunate ones become drivers. In Saudi Arabia, it is not uncommon for poor Rohingyas to marry off their young sometimes underage, daughters to old and sick Saudis in the hope of getting "official favours".
But this has not worked for many. Rohingya wives of Saudi men have to survive as second class human beings on the periphery of society. Those in Jeddah prisons seem to have accepted the situation as a 'fait accompli'.
Often, boats full of the Rohingyas are towed to the sea to go adrift by Thai authorities, after weeks of harsh treatment.
Over 1000 Rohingyas were herded in wooden boats, with no engines, and abandoned at sea in last seven weeks alone. Hundreds of them, were later rescued or washed up to the shores in Indonesia and the Andaman Islands. They bore scars from beatings.
They were abandoned at sea with little food and water. Hundreds more, who cannot be accounted for, are presumed drowned. "There are attempts, I think, to let these people drift to other shores," the Thai leader, Abhisit Vejjajiva, told CNN in an interview aired recently. "I have asked whether people are aware of such practices."
Abhisit acknowledged that the boats do not have engines. Survivors narrated how engines were taken out of the vessels before being towed out to sea. Abhisit said his investigation was yet to uncover who was responsible.
The writer can be reached at wisdom_peace@ymail.com
THE long historical background of Arakan claims the existence of the world's most oppressed ethnic minority, Rohingya Muslims.
The Rohingyas are Muslims from the Mayu frontier area, the Buthidaung and Maungdaw township in the isolated province of Rakhine in western Myanmar, on the Naaf river. which demarcates the boundary between Myanmar and Bangladesh.
When Burma gained independence from the UK in 1948, the ethnic and religious groups first favoured joining Pakistan but later called for an autonomous region. The Myanmar government, however, has consistently refused to recognise the Rohingyas as citizens.
According to Amnesty International (AI), in 1978 more than 0.2 million Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh, following the Operation Nagamin by Myanmar army. It is claimed that most of them were eventually repatriated. But about 15,000 stayed back. In 1991, a second wave of about 25,000 Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh. Some of them later went to Malaysia, where they continue to be rounded up by immigration personnel. They are handed over to human traffickers at the Thai-Malaysia border.
The Rohingyas are the victims of religious and racial discrimination in Buddhist majority Myanmar. At least 50 per cent of the total Rohingya population was compelled to take refuge in other countries.
Without a comprehensive solution to this issue, there is no apparent end to this humanitarian crisis - either in countries where they seek asylum or Myanmar, the country of their origin. The members of the Rohingya community are persecuted in Myanmar. They are denied even the basic human rights. They are victims of systematic human rights abuse. Myanmar is bent on destroying the Rohingyas, a minority community.
Not considered citizens, Myanmar denies them passports. They are not allowed to travel from northern Rakhine province to other parts of Myanmar. They are also debarred from travelling one village to another within the state without permission.
The travel restrictions imposed by the government, debars the young from seeking education and employment opportunities, outside the province. The Rohingyas cannot marry unless they purchase marriage permits at high price.
For child births, a Rohingya has to pay high informal fines or suffer imprisonment. The policy of 'two children only' is applied on them. Since 1948, about 1.5 million Rohingyas have either been expelled or had to flee Myanmar to escape persecution. Most of them had to flee to Bangladesh, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Malaysia, where without any status, they remain vulnerable. Neither civil society organisations, nor the UN and other international organisations ever cared to properly address the issue over the last two decades.
Activist Chris Lewa of the Arakan Project, which advocates for the Rohingyas, said the Rohingya men's tales are numbingly familiar. They are subjected to "arbitrary taxation, forced labour, confiscation of land and religions persecution and compelled to build Buddhist villages in Muslim areas. In this situation a lot of people just hope to flee and find a better life somewhere else," Lewa said. The Myanmar military rulers, apparently would like all the Rohingyas to go abroad for good. Human rights workers say, that is why the military turns a blind eye to, or even encourages the smugglers who take the Rohingyas out. Human Rights Watch recently urged Myanmar's neighbours in South-East Asia to press the military to end their "brutal practices" against the Rohingyas. But the appeal, it is likely, fell on deaf ears.
The Rohingya Muslims flee their native land to escape persecution by their own government. They soon become victims of discrimination and harsh treatment wherever they reach, particularly in Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. First, they arrive in Bangladesh, before leaving for third countries including Thailand, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia.
They do it by procuring Bangladeshi passport. Nowadays, they are compelled to choose the risky sea-route to reach Malaysia via Thailand due to travel difficulties with Bangladeshi passport. The stateless Rohingyas in exile face all sorts of abuse.
Haziqah, a 27-year old female Rohingya refugee, told Irrawaddy News, "I've lost everything in my life and now I can only pray that I don't get sent back to Burma." from her half-built mud hut in the unofficial Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh. Before coming to the camp, she lived in the Bandarban Hill Tracts, with many other Myanmar refugees.
They all fled persecution in Myanmar. As she gave birth to a baby at the time, Haziqul was unable to work. She and her husband managed to survive on a meagre wage he earned doing odd jobs in the locality. But their hopes of a quasi-normal existence were crushed when BDR personnel, rounded up all the Rohingya refugees living there.
They were asked to proceed towards the border. She said that her husband was severely beaten. Ignoring the one-week-old baby in her arms, she said, she was pushed towards the border. When they reached the top of a bordering hill, they were pushed back to Myanmar. In the chaos, she was separated from her husband. Later, she heard that Nasaka, the Myanmar border guards had captured her husband. The stories of rough handling by Bangladesh Rifles are common for the new arrivals at the makeshift refugee camp. Like Haziqah, many other women were separated from their husbands.
Since August when tensions broke out between the two countries over Myanmar's erection of a border fence, arrests and forced repatriation of Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh increased dramatically.
In order to escape arrest, many have fled to unofficial camps, which, unlike the UNHCR camp next door, provide no food rations. The Bangladesh government refuses to accept as refugees, the Rohingyas who arrived in the country after 1991. Bangladesh labels them as illegal migrants, leaving them to fend for themselves.
These who manage to escape the 'push back' following eviction overcrowd the camps where too many refugees have to share whatever food is available. As the Bangladesh government does not recognise the refugees, the NGOs are unable to provide enough food for them. They are compelled to find work in the nearby localities. Following recent arrests at checkpoints they have come across on way to, and from, the workplace, many refugees are too afraid to leave the camp to find work.
According to an article written by Syed Neaz Ahmad, published in The Guardian (UK), about 3,000 Rohingya families in Saudi prisons are awaiting deportation. But, like the other Rohingya refugees, they have nowhere to go.
The Rohingyas were offered shelter in Saudi Arabia by the late King Faisal. But, after Faisal's death, the rules changed, for which about 3,000 of Burmese Muslim families in prisons in Mecca and Jeddah, await deportation.
Women and children are held in separate but nearby prisons. The men contact their wives and children over mobile phones. But the question is what would the eventual destination for these stateless refugees.
Myanmar does not want them. A highly overpopulated Bangladesh has no ability to shelter and feed the refugees.
The Rohingyan refugees in Bangladesh are having a tough time. Other Muslim countries remain silent spectators. Pakistan's offer to accept some of the Rohingyas, awaiting deportation from Saudi prisons, is seen as a mere diplomatic exercise.
Islamabad's persistent refusal to accept 0.3 million stranded Pakistanis, living in camps in Bangladesh, only breeds suspicion among the Rohingyas in Saudi prison, about the Pakistani offer.
The UNHCR spokeswoman in Asia, Kitty Mckinsey says, "No country has really taken up their cause. Look at the Palestinians, for example. They have a lot of countries on their side, unlike the Rohingyas." The late King Faisal's decision to offer them a permanent abode in Saudi Arabia was a noble gesture. However, subsequent Saudi rulers are reluctant to accept the Myanmar Muslims. A majority of about 2.5 Myanmar Muslims in Saudi Arabia live in Mecca's slums (Naqqasha and Kudai). They sell vegetables, sweep streets and work as porters, carpenters and unskilled workers. The fortunate ones become drivers. In Saudi Arabia, it is not uncommon for poor Rohingyas to marry off their young sometimes underage, daughters to old and sick Saudis in the hope of getting "official favours".
But this has not worked for many. Rohingya wives of Saudi men have to survive as second class human beings on the periphery of society. Those in Jeddah prisons seem to have accepted the situation as a 'fait accompli'.
Often, boats full of the Rohingyas are towed to the sea to go adrift by Thai authorities, after weeks of harsh treatment.
Over 1000 Rohingyas were herded in wooden boats, with no engines, and abandoned at sea in last seven weeks alone. Hundreds of them, were later rescued or washed up to the shores in Indonesia and the Andaman Islands. They bore scars from beatings.
They were abandoned at sea with little food and water. Hundreds more, who cannot be accounted for, are presumed drowned. "There are attempts, I think, to let these people drift to other shores," the Thai leader, Abhisit Vejjajiva, told CNN in an interview aired recently. "I have asked whether people are aware of such practices."
Abhisit acknowledged that the boats do not have engines. Survivors narrated how engines were taken out of the vessels before being towed out to sea. Abhisit said his investigation was yet to uncover who was responsible.
The writer can be reached at wisdom_peace@ymail.com