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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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 ...

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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 ...

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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...

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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...

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3,000 Rohingya Muslims have nowhere to go

Refugee camps at Balapur & Shaheen Nagar. Photos: N Shiva Kumar Meru

By T P Venu
The Hans India
May 26, 2016

Hyderabad: Dil Mohammed, 71, is not sure if he wants to go back to Myanmar and neither does he want to live in a state of penury. He just wants to have good food and a clean bed to sleep. Emerging out of his plastic tent near Fatima Masjid at Balapur, Dil just wants a refugee status and a settlement.

With certain death staring at them and hardly any chance of survival, 1,25,000 Rohingya Muslims had to flee from Myanmar during the 2012 Rakhine state riots. Nearly 3,000 of them have been living under plastic tents in Hyderabad

The plight of Rohingya Muslims, nearly 3,000 of them, who started making Hyderabad their temporary home since 2009 is no bed of roses. In each camp as they would like to call their colony, there are close to 60 families living in small plastic tents which are held together with bamboo.

With no proper drinking water facilities and lack of sanitation, these migrants are prone to diseases. Though Confederation of Voluntary Organisations (COVA) is helping asylum-seekers and refugees, almost 98 per cent of Rohingya Muslims who are illiterate are finding it difficult to get jobs.

With language being a problem, most of the men work as daily-wage labourers at construction sites and in small-time hotels. Rohingya Muslims are spread out in Balapur, Royal Colony, Fatima Masjid, Hafiz Baba Nagar, Hamza Colony, Shaheen Nagar, Jalpally, Shastripuram and Kishanbagh.

Md Younus, the only one who speaks English, teaches children on and off. “We want to live with dignity and want the Myanmar Government to give us citizenship or any other country. We have an identity and we no longer want to live like this,” he said. 

“Aung San Suu Kyi herself spent 15 years under house arrest but now she isn’t willing to give us freedom and our rightful place,” he added. In a recent interview to the US Ambassador Scot Marciel, Suu Kyi suggested to him to not use the term Rohingya. 

Rohingya Muslims are treated as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and for this reason, Myanmar denies them citizenship. According to United Nations, 1,20,000 of them have been forced to flee Myanmar in the last few years.

Mohammed-ul-Haq, spokesperson for the Rohingya Muslims in Hyderabad, said, “We have been living in Myanmar for Rakhine State in Myanmar for over a hundred and fifty years. Today, the government does not recognise us. We want to live as citizens and not refugees. There are a number of us who still have not got the refugee status.”

From a mere 30 people who landed in 2009, the number has swelled to 3,000. People who are eligible have to go through a four step process before a card is issued. The lack of English and local language skills and illiteracy is making it difficult for the Rohingya Muslims to make two-ends meet and as a result are also falling prey to anti-social elements.

Most of them had to take special permission even to visit Yangon and none of the refugees ever seen the place. With the government in Myanmar not too keen to receive them, they have been living in penury not only in Hyderabad but in several other states in India. The UNHCR regards that the Rohingya are among the most persecuted minorities in the world but no one seems to embrace the ‘nowhere people’ as of now.

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Rohingya Exodus