Jehangir Hussain :
The Rohingya crisis has deepened for Bangladesh as their repatriation to their homeland, Myanmar has become uncertain due to recent development there. The situation has increased the burden on overpopulated Bangladesh requiring it to host the world’s largest number of refuges, an estimated 1.1 million.
The Rohingyas faced decades of systematic persecution, discrimination, statelessness and targeted violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine province forcing countless Rohingya women, girls, boys and men to flee to Bangladesh since 1978. They fled to Bangladesh also in 1991-1992 and again in 2016.
In August 2017, the largest and fastest Rohingya refugee influx into Bangladesh occurred with an estimated 745,000 Rohingyas including more than 400,000 children. They fled into Cox’s Bazar.
In Myanmar, entire villages were burned to ashes, families were separated and killed, and women and girls were gang raped. Most of the people who escaped were severely traumatized after witnessing unspeakable atrocities. These people found temporary shelter in refugee camps around Cox’s Bazar, now hosting the world’s largest number of refugees.
As of March 2019, over 909,000 stateless Rohingya refugees reside in Ukhiya and Teknaf Upazilas. The vast majority of them have been living in 34 extremely congested camps, including the largest single site, the Kutupalong-Balukhali Expansion Site, has been hosting approximately 626,500 Rohingya refugees.
Rohingyas living in an extremely precarious situation as the root cause of their plight in Myanmar have not been addressed by the international community. Their future has become uncertain. They are vulnerable, living in highly challenging circumstances, exposed to the monsoon elements and dependent on aid. They became ‘stateless entities’, as the Myanmar government does not recognise them as citizens of Myanmar. Lacking legal protection in Myanmar, the Rohingya people became one of the most persecuted people on earth.
To address the ongoing needs, a new Joint Response Plan was launched in February 2019, with a request to provide $920.5 million to provide life-saving assistance to 1.2 million people, including Rohingya refugees who fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar and local host communities.
Until April 17, only 17 per cent of the money sought was funded, to meet the priority expenses for food, water, sanitation, shelter and medical care for the period January-December 2019. Bangladesh has extended temporary shelter to over 18,000 refugees on Bhasan Char.
In 2015, tens of thousands of Rohingyas were forcibly displaced from their villages and camps in the Rakhine province, Myanmar, through systematic genocide. Some fled to Bangladesh, but many others to, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand by risky boats via the waters of the Strait of Malacca, Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) an estimated that 50,000 people had left by smugglers’ boats from January to March in 2015. During the risky voyage, at least 100 Rohingyas died in Indonesia, 200 in Malaysia and 10 in Thailand, after the traffickers abandoned them at sea.
In October 2015, researchers from the International State Crime at Queen Mary University, London, released a report drawing on leaked government documents that reveal an increasing “ghettoization, sporadic massacres, and restrictions on movement” of Rohingya people.
According to the researchers, the Myanmar government is at the final stages of an organised process of genocide against the Rohingyas, they appealed to the international community to redress the plight of the Rohingyas, who are Muslim and Hindu minorities residing in the western state of Rakhine, Myanmar, formerly known as Arrakkan. The religion of this ethnic group is a variation of the Sufism Islam and Hinduism.
During the British colonisation of Myanmar, then Burma, between 1837 and 1937, migration of labourers from India and Bangladesh to Myanmar was significant. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), this sort of migration was considered an internal movement because the British administered Burma a province of India. After Burma became independent in 1948, the Rohingya population was denied citizenship. They were excluded from the Union Citizenship Act. In 1982, a new citizenship law was passed that also did not include Rohingya in the list of country’s 135 ethnic groups. Before the law was passed, the Rohingya people enjoyed the same opportunities as the other Burmese.
After the law was passed, they were deprived of those opportunities. In the 1970s, the Myanmar military began a campaign of brutal crackdowns in Rohingya villages, forcing the Rohingya population to flee Myanmar. Many Rohingyas migrated illegally to predominantly Buddhist Bengali villages.
On 1 May 2015, some 32 shallow graves were discovered on a remote mountain in Thailand, at a so-called ‘waiting area’ where illegal migrants were being held before being smuggled into Malaysia.
A few Hindu migrants were found alive in the grave and later treated at a local hospital, as reported by Thai news agencies. On 22 May 2015, however, the Myanmar navy rescued 208 migrants at sea. These migrants confirmed having fled from Myanmar.
Following this incident, nationalist protests erupted in the capital, calling for the international community to stop blaming Myanmar for the Rohingya crisis.
On 24 May 2015, Malaysian police discovered 139 suspected graves in a series of abandoned camps used by human traffickers on the border with Thailand where Rohingya Hindus and Muslims fleeing Myanmar were believed to have been held.
The dominant ethnic group in the region, the Rakhine rejects the label ‘Rohingya’. Specific laws pertaining to this population impose restrictions on ‘marriage, family planning, employment, education, religious choice, and freedom of movement’.
They face widespread poverty, with 78per cent of the families living below the poverty line in Myanmar.
The international community denounced the ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing. Many Rohingya were placed in internment camps, and more than 120,000 remain housed there. In 2015, “more than 40 Rohingya were massacred in the village of Du Chee Yar Tan by local men, the U.N. confirmed. Among the findings were 10 severed heads in a water tank, including those of children. The number of Rohingya refugees in the US increased significantly since 2014.
(Jehangir Hussain is a senior journalist.
Email: [email protected]).
