March 17, 2025

News @ RB

Announcement of New Website: Rohingya Today (RohingyaToday.Com) Dear Readers, From 1st January 2019 onward, the Rohingya News Portal 'Rohingya Blogger' will be renamed and upgraded as 'Rohingya Today'. Due to this transition to a new name, our website will be available at www.rohing...

Rohingya News @ Int'l Media

Maung Zarni, leader of the Free Rohingya Coalition, speaks at a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo on Thursday. | CHISATO TANAKA By Chisato Tanaka, Published by The Japan Times on October 25, 2018 A leader of a global network of activists for Rohingya Mu...

Myanmar News

By Sena Güler | Published by Anadolu Agency on December 1, 2018 Maung Zarni says he will boycott Beijing-sponsored events until the country reverses its 'troubling path' ANKARA -- A human rights activist and intellectual said he withdrew from a Beijing-sponsored forum in London to pro...

Video News

...

Article @ RB

Oskar Butcher RB Article October 6, 2018 Every night in an unassuming shop space located in Mandalay’s 39thStreet, Lu Maw and Lu Zaw – the remaining members of the Burma’s most famous comedy trio, the Moustache Brothers – present their show: a curious combination of comedy, political sa...

Article @ Int'l Media

A demonstration over identity cards at a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh in April, 2018. Image: NurPhoto/SIPA USA/PA Images. By Natalie Brinham | Published by Open Democracy on October 21, 2018 Wary of the past, Rohingya have frustrated the UN’s attempts to provide them with documenta...

Analysis @ RB

By M.S. Anwar | Opinion & Analysis The Burmese (Myanmar) quasi-civilian government unleashed a large-scale violence against the minority Rohingya in the western Myanmar state of Arakan in 2012. The violence, which some wrongly frame as ‘Communal’, was carried out by the Burmese armed forces...

Analysis @ Int'l Media

By Maung Zarni, Natalie Brinham | Published by Middle East Institute on November 20, 2018 “It is an ongoing genocide (in Myanmar),” said Mr. Marzuki Darusman, the head of the UN Human Rights Council-mandated Independent International Fact-Finding Mission at the official briefing at ...

Opinion @ RB

Rohingya refugees who fled from Myanmar wait to be let through by Bangladeshi border guards after crossing the border in Palang Khali, Bangladesh October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj MS Anwar RB Opinion November 12, 2018 Some may differ. But I believe the government of Bangladesh is ...

Opinion @ Int'l Media

By Maung Zarni | Published by Anadolu Agency on December 15, 2018 US will not intercede, and Myanmar's neighbors see it through economic lens, so international coalition for Rohingya needed LONDON -- The U.S. House of Representatives Thursday overwhelmingly passed a resolution ca...

History @ RB

Aman Ullah  RB History August 25, 2016 The ethnic Rohingya is one of the many nationalities of the union of Burma. And they are one of the two major communities of Arakan; the other is Rakhine and Buddhist. The Muslims (Rohingyas) and Buddhists (Rakhines) peacefully co-existed in the A...

Rohingya History by Scholars

Dr. Maung Zarni's Remark: The best research on Rohingya history: British Orientalism which created the pseudo-scientific biological notion of "Taiyinthar" or "real natives" of #Myanmar caused that country's post-colonial cancer of official & popular genocidal Racism.  This co...

Report @ RB

(Photo: Soe Zeya Tun, Reuters) RB News  October 5, 2013  Thandwe, Arakan – Rakhinese mob in Thandwe started attacking Kaman Muslims on September 28, 2013. As a result, 5 Kaman Muslims were mercilessly killed and 1 was died in heart attack while escaping the attack. 781 Kaman Mus...

Report by Media/Org

Rohingya families arrive at a UNHCR transit centre near the village of Anjuman Para, Cox’s Bazar, south-east Bangladesh after spending four days stranded at the Myanmar border with some 6,800 refugees. (Photo: UNHCR/Roger Arnold) By UN News May 11, 2018 Late last year, as violent repressi...

Press Release

(Photo: Reuters) Joint Statement: Rohingya Groups Call on U.S. Government to Ensure International Accountability for Myanmar Military-Planned Genocide December 17, 2018  We, the undersigned Rohingya organizations worldwide, call for accountability for genocide and crimes against...

Rohingya Orgs Activities

RB News December 6, 2017 Tokyo, Japan -- Legislators from all parties, along with Human Rights Now, Human Rights Watch, and Save the Children, came together to host the emergency parliament in-house event “The Rohingya Human Rights Crisis and Japanese Diplomacy” on December 4th. The eve...

Petition

By Wyston Lawrence RB Petition October 15, 2017 There is one petition has been going on Change.org to remove Ven. Wira Thu from Facebook. He has been known as Buddhist Bin Laden. Time magazine published his image on their cover with the title of The Face of Buddhist Terror. The petitio...

Campaign

A human rights activist and genocide scholar from Burma Dr. Maung Zarni visits Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi Extermination Camp and calls on European governments - Britain, France, Sweden, Norway, Italy, Denmark, Hungary and Germany not to collaborate with the Evil - like they did with Hitler 75 ye...

Event

...

Editorial by Int'l Media

By Dhaka Tribune Editorial November 5, 2017 How can we answer to our conscience knowing full-well what the Myanmar military is doing to the innocent Rohingya minority -- not even sparing children or pregnant women? Despite the on-going humanitarian crisis involving Rohingya refugees ...

Interview

Open Letter

RB Poem

Book Shelf

3 generations of Rohingya living in India trapped in a stateless cycle

The congested Rohingya settlement in New Delhi (left), where 16-year-old Ashokur Rahman lives. Photo: Bibek Bhandari


By Bibek Bhandari
May 5, 2014

Persecuted in their home country Myanmar, refugees taken in by India live in squalid conditions with little hope of ever returning from exile

Most teenagers have books in their backpacks, but Ashokur Rahman's bag has his most-prized possessions: a refugee card from the United Nations' refugee agency, UNHCR, and a single-entry visa from the Indian government that expires in 2015.

Rahman is one of the 6,000 Rohingya Muslims registered with UNHCR in India out of which approximately 4,500 have received refugee cards. However, he represents a small fraction of the population that has fled Myanmar fearing persecution, either into Bangladesh, or by boat to Malaysia.

Thousands of stateless Rohingya are estimated to be living across India, including in the capital, New Delhi.

A dusty road opposite an under-construction metro station in Kalindi Kunj in south New Delhi is Rahman's temporary address. It's a cluster of 50 houses sharing the same plot of land provided by the Zakat Foundation of India, a non-government organisation. More than 200 people live in an area roughly the size of three tennis courts.

Ashokur Rahman. Photo: Bibek Bhandari

The houses in this settlement known as Darul Hijrat - "Migrants' house" in Arabic - are makeshift shacks made of tarpaulin sheets and bamboo stilts. At 38-degrees Celsius, with no proper ventilation, the houses heat like an oven. During winter, residents say the houses are frigid, and they leak during monsoon season.

"But at least we don't have to pay rent," Rahman said. His family paid 500 rupees (HK$65) a month to live in a similar settlement in Jammu before coming to New Delhi.

Rahman, 16, has been on the move as long as he can remember. His father first came to India and then paid a "middleman" to help the rest of the family cross the border. He started working as a child, collecting metals. In New Delhi, when lucky, he works menial jobs that pay about 250 rupees a day.

"Maybe if I were literate, it might have been different," he said. "But if I go to school, who will earn for my family? My mother has to look after my siblings and my father is too old to work."

While young men spend their days looking for work or just hanging around, women often stay indoors as half-naked children run around the neighbourhood. Ageing residents lay in bed helpless, struggling with health problems. But resident Mohammad Haroon said that with summer approaching, the entire community could be vulnerable to various health risks.

Haroon is concerned about hygiene and sanitation, especially the lack of clean drinking water and no proper sewage system.

"These challenges will always remain," Haroon said. "But at least we have a place to stay."

For people like Sekowara, the settlements are a reminder of the country she escaped from. The 25-year-old said she left Myanmar with her father as a child after her mother was killed. Her congested room is now home to three generations. "Our parents lived as refugees, we are living as refugees, and our children might also live as refugees," said the mother of three.

"I'm concerned about my children's future. I would return [to Myanmar, if the situation improved]."

But when they hear about the atrocities there, even the few hopeful Rohingya turn negative.

Abdullah, who fled to India in 2012, is among the casualties of the "ethnic cleansing" in Myanmar's Arakan state. But many more like Abdullah's siblings have no choice.

"I call them almost every day," said the 22-year-old, who is still waiting for a refugee card. "I worry about them because there's never good news from Burma."

Dominik Bartsch, UNHCR Chief of Mission in India, said there is, however, still hope for the Rohingya.

"Myanmar is embarking towards greater democratisation and will have to address some of the underlying ethnic issues and agree how to live harmoniously," he said. " In the years to come, we will hopefully see some progress on that count."

But for Rahman, whose memory of his home country is punctured with a hostile past, the future is uncertain. Without a country and a permanent address, he said he will always be in exile and his identity limited to the number on his refugee card.

Write A Comment

Pages 22123456 »
Rohingya Exodus