Rohingya people have no home,
rejected by Bangladesh and rendered stateless by Burma. The Burmese
government claims Rohingya people are Bangladeshi, but Bangladesh claims
they are illegal migrants.
Friday, June 29th 2012, 09:09 AM
Some sobbed quietly while others pleaded and
raised their arms to heaven. Their children looked on with glassy
stares, utterly exhausted after days at sea in an open boat. Soon they
would be on the water again, escorted by a Bangladeshi coast guard
vessel and pushed back into the waters of Burma where they knew violence
still raged.
"The Mogh slaughtered my brothers. They will kill us
all … please help us!" screamed a woman carrying a baby only a few
months old, before she was hustled away by border guards.
The
sectarian violence in Burma that has sent boatloads of refugees fleeing
to Bangladesh in recent weeks – and being firmly pushed back – has once
again turned the spotlight on the plight of Burma's Rohingya minority.
There
is no place the Rohingya people can call home. Burma passed a law in
1982 – criticized as discriminatory by human rights groups – that
effectively rendered them stateless. Waves of ethnic violence since
1991, some of it state-sponsored, have pushed more than 250,000
Rohingyas into Bangladesh, where they live in squalid, makeshift camps
with little or no access to healthcare or education.
Nozir
Hossain, 70, knows well what it means to live in limbo. Hossain, who
used to be a farmer in the Maung Daw area of Burma's Arakan state, has
been living in an unauthorized camp in Teknaf, on Bangladesh's southern
tip, since 2001.
Sitting in the tiny shack he shares with four
others, Hossain described the day his family was forcibly uprooted. "The
Mogh [ethnic Rakhine] surrounded our village at dawn," he recalled.
"The Nasaka [Burmese border troops] were behind them. They set fire to
the houses and chopped, hacked and shot at anyone who got in their way.
Two of my sons were slaughtered in front of my eyes. When I flung up my
arm to protect my head, a machete nearly took my hand off. I fell and
lay in a pool of my sons' blood. The killers moved on, leaving me for
dead."
Despite the horrors he has witnessed, Hossain hopes to go
back to Burma one day. "There is nothing for us here," he said. "We
would like to go back home … back to farming our land. I hope the
government will be fair and give us our rights."
Hossain was
repatriated to Burma in 2005, but he came back after finding his land
occupied by Rakhine. He said both the Burmese and Bangladeshi
governments are falsely characterizing the position of the Rohingya.
"The
Burmese government says we're Bangladeshi, but the Arakan is the only
home we know. My father was born in Arakan and so was my grandfather.
The Bangladesh government says we're illegal migrants. But we didn't
enter Bangladesh secretly to work. We came to save ourselves and our
families."
According to Bangladeshi historian Abdul Aziz, there
have been Muslims in Arakan since Arab traders came to the region in the
eighth century. "The poetry of 17th-century poets like Alaol clearly
mentions Muslims in positions of power in the court of the Arakan king,"
Aziz said. "The writing of travellers like Ibn Batuta in the 14th
century proves that Bengal was one of the wealthiest nations in the
world while Arakan was infested with pirates. There was migration from
Arakan to Bengal and not the other way round."
Despite
centuries-old roots in the Arakan region, discriminatory policies have
been imposed on the Rohingya since Arakan was annexed by Burma in 1784.
According to the Arakan Project, an NGO, the Rohingya are subjected to
severe restrictions on their movement and marriages, and to arrests,
extortion, forced labor and confiscation of land.
"The Nasaka used
to come and take away the men and boys," said Hossain. "They forced us
to work as laborers without pay. This was only done to us, not to
Rakhine or anybody else."
The Rohingya have not fared much better
on the Bangladesh side of the border. The government in Dhaka has
refused to allow the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to
register Rohingya arrivals since 1992. This means all but 30,000 of the
Rohingyas are denied refugee status. The unregistered Rohingyas – more
than 200,000 by some estimates – are officially considered illegal
migrants and cannot get food rations provided by the World Food Program.
They are also denied access to basic healthcare and education provided
by the UNHCR and its partner organizations.
The Bangladesh
government is determined to keep services to a bare minimum to avoid
creating a "pull factor" – conditions that will attract more refugees –
an official of the ministry of food and disaster management said, on
condition of anonymity.
As part of government policy, the NGO
Affairs Bureau in Dhaka has not approved project proposals in health,
education and other sectors in Cox's Bazar district, even if it benefits
the local Bangladeshi community. Last year, Dhaka rejected a $33m UN
joint initiative to develop Cox's Bazar with special focus on education
and health.
The government has also put a stop to the UNHCR's
resettlement program, under which 900 Rohingyas were resettled in third
countries to restart their lives. Most went to Australia, the UK and
Canada. In November 2010, the Bangladesh government suspended the
program, pending a review.
Life is grim even for those in the
authorized refugee camp. Rohingya children in the camp are permitted to
study up to primary level – fifth grade – but not beyond. "Keeping them
motivated is the main challenge," said Shahin Islam, director of the
Education for Refugee Children project run by Save the Children. "It's
very easy for them to lose hope … they don't see a future ahead."
Many
experts have questioned the view that registering more Rohingya
nationals in Bangladesh will bring more refugees across the border.
"People do not leave their homes and go to a foreign country just
because there's a basic health clinic or primary schools," said Jing
Song, the UNHCR spokesperson in Dhaka. "Knowing who the refugees are and
where they are is the first step to a solution to this protracted
refugee situation. It's not only to the benefit of refugees, but also to
the benefit of the host country."
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