Are Rohingya the world's most unwanted people?
When their country is not running them out of town, Rohingya live like prisoners in their own homes.
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| NOWHERE LEFT TO RUN FOR MYANMAR'S ROHINGYA Hundreds of thousands of Myanmar's Rohingya, commonly described as the most persecuted people on Earth, live in camps huddled on the border of their country with Bangladesh. (Photo: Fairfax Media) |
Fairfax Media
August 13, 2013
Kutupalong New Camp, Bangladesh-Myanmar border: Mohammed Rahim* has walked an hour to talk to us, from the green slopes of western Myanmar where he lives, down through the jungle, past the razor-wire fence and the border checkpoints, to this small wooden hut in Bangladesh.
From the window where he sits, the 18-year-old can see the hills of his homeland, and he speaks quietly about his life back over the border.
"We are afraid to live in our country, the situation is so bad," he says. "In the past we could move freely from one village to another, from our home to a neighbour's house. Now it is strictly forbidden – we can't even go to see our relatives."
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The Rakhine state government has closed the Islamic schools and banned Muslim children from state education. Rohingya cannot marry without authority, which is almost never given.
"People are getting married in secret, but if you are caught, you will get kicked out. It is like living in a prison." Rahim is a Rohingya, one of a Muslim ethnic minority who live in Rakhine state in western Myanmar. For generations, the Rohingya have suffered serious oppression in the Buddhist-majority country: victims of a visceral hatred and a state-sanctioned, systematic campaign to disenfranchise and, it would seem at times, destroy them.
The government makes little secret of its desire to run the Rohingya out of the country, or see them bred out of existence. Rohingyas are "not our ethnicity . . . we will send them away if any third country will accept them," President Thein Sein said last year.
The man who is now Myanmar's representative to the United Nations, Ye Myint Aung, was even less diplomatic a few years earlier: "They are ugly as ogres."
Since 1984, Myanmar law has outlawed Rohingya families from having more than two children.
Rohingya require passes to move from one village to another, and they are banned from cities. Arbitrary arrest by soldiers is common, as are land grabs by the government.
In June and October last year, Rakhine was gripped by violent clashes between Rohingya and the Buddhist Burmese majority.
The riots were sparked by the alleged assault of a Buddhist woman, but quickly became an outlet for the long-standing enmity between the two groups.
Figures vary, but at least 200 people were killed and more than 140,000 Rohingya were forced from their homes.
Some found other villages in Myanmar; others ran over the border to Bangladesh.
An estimated 37,000 have since boarded boats to Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia.
Alam is a former village headman in a village close to Rahim's. He says his country is trying to kill his people.
"I am very worried for my children and grandchildren. Our lives are getting worse every day. In my village, the mosque is shut and anyone who tries to go there will be killed."
Alam wants to stay in Myanmar; he is too old to leave. Besides, he says, there are few places for a Rohingya to go.
For the Rohingya, this is the fundamental problem: they are unwanted in their own country, and almost nowhere else.
Malaysia, a Muslim country with an appetite for cheap foreign labour, has been a destination for thousands over decades, and Indonesia has experienced a recent wave of asylum seekers.
About 30,000 Rohingya are recognised as refugees in Bangladesh. They live in two camps along the border and receive UN and other aid assistance. But up to 200,000 are in the country illegally, and Bangladesh refuses to accept them as refugees.
The slums where they live, like Kutupalong New Camp, where 55,000 people are jammed into a shallow, muddy valley barely bigger than a football field, officially don't exist.
The UN and aid agencies are forbidden from helping the people here. The neighbouring villages are uninterested, and moreover poor enough as it is.
Left to fend for themselves, Rohingya eke out what living they can. Most collect firewood from the nearby forests and sell it, but leaving the camp makes men vulnerable to violence and extortion, women to rape.
Regularly, and without warning, Bangladeshi police crack down and forbid people from leaving the camps at all. The internment can last days: the people inside the camp go hungry.
Nasima lives with her five children in a one-room hut with a roof made of garbage bags and a dirt floor that turns to a quagmire every time it rains.
"It all gets wet, all the water floods in, and we have to stay awake all night and sit in a corner."
Aged and widowed, she relies upon the labour of her children, collecting wood. It is the very definition of a hand-to-mouth existence.
Finding somewhere else to run to is beyond Nasima's ken. "How can I go? We can't even feed ourselves. We don't have any money. I have five children here, we have no hope."
Nurul Islam says the persecution of Rohingya in Myanmar has steadily worsened over years.
"It is impossible to live a normal life, to get married, to move freely. We cannot farm our own lands because they are stolen from us." He says he fled after government troops attacked him. "See what they have done to us, see how they have tortured me. They have stabbed me in the leg, they chopped my finger off."
The camp now is made more miserable by the monsoon. The deluge turns the narrow alleys to mud, and malaria and waterborne diseases are common. There is no clinic, and no one has enough money to see a doctor outside.
The school, built and run by the refugees themselves, does what it can to teach the children Burmese, Bengali and English, but efforts are hamstrung by a lack of resources and the need for children to work.
The UN has entreated Myanmar, Bangladesh and the wider world to assist.
US President Barack Obama warned Mr Thein Sein this year that the campaign of violence against Muslims must stop, while Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr visited in June, offering $9 million to help the Rohingya, and called for "efforts to resolve the underlying causes of the unrest in Rakhine state".
Vivian Tan, spokeswoman for the UN's High Commissioner for Refugees, said that until the causes of the problem were addressed, "including communal tensions, the lack of citizenship and rights for the Rohingya, and general underdevelopment in Rakhine state", Rohingya will continue to seek safety in new countries.
Melanie Teff from Refugees International told Fairfax that since the violence of last year uprooted thousands of families, the oppression of Rohingya had only worsened.
"Sadly, the people I've spoken to don't see a future for themselves in Myanmar . . . it's very frightening where this could end."
Rahim and Alam leave the wooden hut where we've been talking separately, to avoid the attention of the soldiers standing on the border a few hundred metres away.
Rahim leaves last.
"Good luck," we tell him, "we hope you will be OK."
"God willing," he answers.
* Names have been changed to protect identities.
The video can be watched here.
