The Rohingyas are being wiped out in slow motion


THE ECONOMIST
Thu, August 18, 2022 

On a vacant patch of land in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state along the western flank of Myanmar, grass grows long under the hot sun. A house once stood on this plot, though all trace of it is long gone. Mohammed, a 36-year-old Rohingya man, grew up in that house and lived there until 2012, when he and his family were forced to flee by a band of ethnic Rakhines wielding sticks and torches. That summer mobs of Rakhine villagers and Burmese soldiers razed Rohingya villages and killed hundreds of people belonging to the long-persecuted Muslim minority group. Some 140,000 Rohingyas were displaced in the melee and herded into camps, where they have remained ever since.

The pogrom of 2012 laid the groundwork for a bigger bout of bloodshed five years later. In 2017 Burmese security forces launched a campaign of mass killing, rape and arson in northern Rakhine, in what the un has branded as genocide. Nearly 750,000 Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh, where they live in the world’s biggest refugee camp (see map).


In the decade since the rampage of 2012 and the five years since the genocide of 2017, the Rohingyas have been subject to conditions designed to drain the life from the ethnic group, according to the un. Crossing over into Bangladesh afforded some respite, at first. Yet the Bangladeshi government has long since begun to view the refugees as a burden. Violence in the camps is rampant, with much of it committed by the Bangladeshi security forces. No matter which side of the border Rohingyas find themselves today, their experience is the same: hunger and misery surrounded by barbed wire.

The Burmese army, which has run Myanmar for most of the past 50 years, began persecuting Rohingyas decades ago. It first attempted to drive them off their land in 1978, using the now familiar tools of murder, arson and rape. Its high command considers them Bangladeshi interlopers, with no claim to Burmese citizenship—as do many other Burmese. It enshrined that view in law 40 years ago, turning the Rohingyas into the world’s largest community of stateless people.

It was not until 2012, however, that the government began to herd Rohingyas into camps. This segregation, in addition to the imposition of a matrix of repressive laws, which include restrictions on marriage and having children, amount to a system of apartheid, according to Human Rights Watch (hrw), an advocacy group. After the genocide of 2017, this vice tightened.

Today about a fifth of the Rohingyas who remain in Myanmar live in what Fortify Rights, a pressure group, calls “modern concentration camps”. One unfortunate resident, Hla Maung, lives cheek by jowl with 11 relatives in one of the cramped shelters into which families are crowded. These structures were originally designed to last two years. Many have been badly damaged by monsoons and flooding over the past decade. In April some 28,000 Rohingyas were living in shelters deemed by the un to be structurally unsound. Because international aid agencies must apply to travel to the camps two weeks in advance, they cannot always repair shelters right away. “Living conditions are, by design, squalid,” observed hrw in a recent report.

Harsh restrictions on movement make life harder still. More than three-quarters of displaced Rohingyas cannot leave their camps at all, according to a survey conducted in 2015 by the Centre for Diversity and National Harmony, a Burmese ngo. The rest may travel, but only to a Rohingya ghetto in Sittwe or to Sittwe General Hospital, the sole facility in the state that provides specialised treatment. Medical referrals are granted only for emergencies and even then getting the necessary travel authorisation can take days. Access to health care in the camps is limited. In the more remote ones, doctors visit for just a couple of hours once or twice a week. Rates of disease and child mortality are higher in the camps than elsewhere in the state, according to the International Rescue Committee, an aid organisation.

Those who can leave the camps must get a “village departure certificate” which costs up to 5,000 kyat ($3.45). Sometimes security forces demand travellers present an identity card proving their citizenship, which most Rohingyas lack. All Rohingyas must pass through numerous checkpoints manned by soldiers who demand bribes, and to leave they must often also pay for a “security escort”, which costs up to 20,000 kyat. These restrictions prevent Rohingyas from working, making it difficult for them to supplement the cash or food aid they receive from ngos, which residents say is insufficient for their daily needs.

For the roughly 300,000-350,000 Rohingyas who have not been herded into camps, conditions are still dire. They, too, are rarely granted permission to get treatment at Sittwe General Hospital. And though they continue to live in their own homes, a mesh of restrictions hems them in as well. They are not allowed to leave their districts without authorisation. Security checkpoints strewn throughout their villages are manned by soldiers who enforce curfews (from 6pm to 6am) and rules limiting gatherings in public areas to no more than five people. Violations of these rules lead to beatings or detention.

These conditions appear calculated to bring about the “slow death” of the Rohingyas, says the un. Their numbers in Myanmar have dropped precipitously. Before 2017 the country was home to as many as 1.3m Rohingyas. (No reliable numbers exist as they were not included in the last census in 2014, the first in 30 years.) Now the population is closer to 600,000. Most fled to Bangladesh. But many are likely to have died because of the grim living conditions.

There are dismaying parallels between the experiences of Rohingyas in Rakhine state and those in the refugee camps of Bangladesh. At first refugees could work in surrounding towns, recalls Hakim Ullah, who has lived in the refugee settlement in Cox’s Bazar district since 2017. Now they need permission to leave the camps. Shops and schools in the camps were demolished earlier this year by the Bangladeshi authorities, who have banned paid work and private education. “The refugee camps have become detention camps”, says Rahamat Ullah, a Rohingya civil-rights activist who lives in Cox’s Bazar.

Nor have refugees traded freedom for safety. Militant groups and criminal gangs operating in the camps regularly commit murders, kidnappings and robberies. Bangladesh’s security forces do much of the terrorising themselves, according to reports from human-rights groups. The Armed Police Battalion, the specialist unit responsible for security in the camps, acts “with impunity”, says Ashraf Zaman of the Asian Human Rights Commission, a pressure group based in Thailand. The battalion has reportedly beaten children and raped women. The Bangladeshi forces are so brutal, that they remind Mr Hakim Ullah of the Burmese army. (Bangladeshi authorities did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Economist.)

As long as the Burmese army is in power, little about the Rohingyas’ condition is likely to change. “Life in the camps is worse than prison,” says Mohammed, who now lives in a camp outside Sittwe. At least prisoners know the length of their sentence. Rohingyas do not know if they will ever be released. Even if they are, many would have no home to return to. The authorities long ago bulldozed the ruins of houses like Mohammed’s, and sold the land to developers—making it easier to remove every last trace of the group.

© 2022 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved.

From The Economist, published under licence. The original content can be found on https://www.economist.com/asia/2022/08/18/the-rohingyas-are-being-wiped-out-in-slow-motion

BJP PURGES MUSLIMS
India backtracks on support for Rohingya refugees, will deport them


A Rohingya refugee family rests in a temporary shelter after a fire destroyed a Rohingya refugee camp on Saturday night, in New Delhi


Wed, August 17, 2022 
By Krishna N. Das

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's home ministry said on Wednesday that Rohingya refugees in the capital New Delhi would be held at a detention centre and then deported, contradicting a minister's earlier statement promising flats and security to members of the Muslim minority.

Hardeep Singh Puri, federal minister for housing and urban affairs, had earlier on Wednesday outlined new provisions for the Rohingya, signalling a potential change in the government's critical stance towards the refugee group from Myanmar. Rohingya refugees would be allotted flats in western Delhi's Bakkarwala area, provided basic amenities and round-the-clock police protection, Puri had said on Twitter.

But, just hours after Puri's tweets, the federal home ministry said in a statement that "Rohingya illegal foreigners https://pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetail.aspx?PRID=1852521" would remain at a locality in the city's southern reaches as authorities worked to deport them.

"Illegal foreigners are to be kept in the detention centre till their deportation as per law," the home ministry said in a statement.

"The Government of Delhi has not declared the present location as a detention centre. They have been directed to do the same immediately."

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has previously tried to repatriate members of the Rohingya, who are a minority community in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled from persecution and waves of violence in their homeland over the years, mainly to Bangladesh. (https://reut.rs/3PvPvBo)

As of early this year, around 1,100 Rohingya lived in Delhi and another 17,000 elsewhere in India, working mainly as manual labourers, hawkers and rickshaw pullers, according to estimates from Rohingya rights activist Ali Johar.

He said some 2,000 Rohingya had left for Bangladesh this year, amid fears of being deported.

"Most of the Rohingya in Delhi now live in rented accommodation, where they feel safe, or in settlements," said Johar, 27, who moved to India a decade ago and lives with his family.

Speaking to Reuters before the home ministry's statement, Johar underlined fears among the community, which has faced the ire of some Indian right-wing Hindu groups, that the new facilities could be used to corral the Rohingya.

"If it turns out to be a detention camp, that will be a nightmare for us," he said.

(Writing by Devjyot Ghoshal; Additional reporting by Krishna N. Das; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Bernadette Baum)

Bangladesh PM tells UN that Myanmar must take Rohingya back

 

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina greets the gathering during an interaction with journalists after official election results gave her a third straight term, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Dec. 31, 2018. Hasina on Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2022, told a visiting U.N. official that hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees must go back to their ancestral home in Myanmar from crowded camps in neighboring Bangladesh.


JULHAS ALAM
Wed, August 17, 2022 

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Bangladesh's leader told a visiting U.N. official on Wednesday that hundreds of thousands of ethnic minority Rohingya refugees living in overcrowded camps in Bangladesh must return home to Myanmar, where they had fled waves of violent persecution.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina made the comment to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka. Bachelet arrived on Sunday and visited Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar district near the border with Myanmar.

“The Rohingya are nationals of Myanmar and they have to be taken back,” Hasina was quoted as saying by her press secretary, Ihsanul Karim.

Muslim Rohingya face widespread discrimination in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where most are denied citizenship and many other rights. More than 700,000 fled to Bangladesh starting in late August 2017 when the Myanmar military launched a “clearance operation” against them following attacks by a rebel group. The safety situation in Myanmar has worsened following a military takeover last year.

Currently, Bangladesh is hosting more than 1 million Rohingya refugees.

The refugees will mark the fifth anniversary of their latest influx in Bangladesh amid botched attempts to send them home. Earlier this month, Bangladesh sought cooperation from China in repatriating Rohingya to Myanmar during a visit by Foreign Minister Wang Yi. China had brokered a November 2017 agreement with Myanmar aimed at sending them back.

Hasina and several Cabinet ministers earlier expressed frustration over what they called Myanmar's inaction in taking them back under the agreement. The U.N. and Bangladesh authorities have tried at least twice to began repatriations, but the refugees refused to go, citing safety concerns in Myanmar.

When Bachelet visited the camps on Wednesday, refugees urged the U.N. to help improve safety inside Myanmar so they can return.

The U.N. said in a statement that the refugees described “their grievances, their pains” to Bachelet.

“When our rights are respected, we can have our livelihoods again, and we can have land, and we can feel that we are part of the country,” it quoted refugees as telling her.

Bachelet emphasized the importance of ensuring that safe and sustainable conditions exist and that any returns be conducted in a voluntary and dignified way, it said.

“The U.N. is doing the best we can to support them. We’ll continue doing that,” she said. “But we also need to deal with the profound roots of the problem. We need to deal with that and ensure that they can go back to Myanmar -– when there are conditions for safety and voluntary return.”

In March, the United States said the oppression of Rohingya in Myanmar amounts to genocide after authorities confirmed accounts of mass atrocities against civilians by Myanmar’s military in a widespread and systematic campaign against the ethnic minority.