Rohingya: Chased from Myanmar, unwelcome in Bangladesh and anywhere

Ethnic Bengalis of Muslim faith, the Rohingyas live in the western region of Myanmar bordering the mother land Bangladesh as well as the hilly area of the Chittagong Hill Tract, where normally they deal with drugs smuggling, theft, robbery, racketeering and rapes of young (male and female). The main community residing in the buddhist Myanmar is unwelcome for the frequent rapes and the social disorder they create in their inhabited areas. Locals Rakhine frequently assail Rohingya villages in order to repel them in Bangladesh and rid the region of that scourge.

Within this horrible dynamic, many innocent Rohingya women and children end up victims of the violences. The Rohingya refugees try to flee to other countries, finding everywhere “walls”, not of bricks but of helmets and rifles: no nation has the courage to accommodate the horde with no nation and no land ultimately become known to the world: the Rohingyas.

Ambia Khatun grabbed her two children and dashed out of her burning house on the early morning of November 23 last year. A teary-eyed Khatun said her husband could not make out of the house as the army started firing.

Thirty-seven-year-old Khatun is from Kearipara village in western Myanmar’s Maungdaw town. She says she fled along with other Rohingya families, leaving behind her husband’s body, as rows of houses were set on fire by the army.

Along with 2,500 Rohingya families, she has taken refuge at a makeshift camp in Leda at eastern Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar near the border with Myanmar. “I grabbed my children and ran towards the forest and waited there with several hundred people,” she told Al Jazeera at her camp in Leda village.

World Food Programme and other local NGOs have come forward to provide food and emergency medical aid, as Bangladesh has refused to register Rohingya Muslims as refugees.

Nearly 65,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh since October when the army launched a crackdown against the Muslim minority after a deadly attack on a military post.

Myanmar says it is acting against perpetrators of the attack, but rights group say the military has been running a systematic campaign of violence against Rohingya in western Rakhine state in order to get rid of them and push them toward Bangladesh.

Malaysia says a congress should be used as platform to express ASEAN member countries’ firm stance against any form of violence against Rohingya… bla bla and also bla… but “unfortunately at the moment” Malaysia is “not able to welcome Rohingya refugees”

A traumatised Khatun says she never imagined that her family could be ruined in this way.

The camp at Leda looks cramped. The facility is squalid and lacks basic amenities. Children roam around the narrow rows of tin and bamboo huts. They lack access to education, medical care and sanitation.

Ziaur Rahman, a Rohingya rickshaw puller (recognizable by the typical Bengali Muslim name), said many people living in the camps have no money to spend. Rahman, who has been living in the area for the last 15 years, told Al Jazeera he chipped in with some money to help them survive. Some Rohingya Muslims, who have money, rent space in nearby houses and some are building new houses, he said.

Toiyaba, 30, arrived at Leda refugee camp with her three children, barely escaping with their lives.
Thirteen members of this Rohingya family live cramped in a small room at Leda camp.
Nurun Nahar (another typical Bengali Muslim), 60, and her four daughters fled after her house was attacked by the army.
Amir Hossain, 40, fled Myanmar along with his seven children for safety in Bangladesh. Despite being a typical Bengali muslim family, they are left in limbo as the Bangladesh government does not recognise them neither as refugees nor as nationals.
Yesmin, right, 14, poses for a photograph with her family members who were forced to flee Myanmar. Rights group say the military has been running a systematic campaign of violence against Rohingya in western Rakhine state.
Rohingya woman runs a shop at the Rohingya refugee camp at Leda.
Local Islamic schools (“madrasas”) have opened their doors to Rohingya children to continue their studies and train them as authentic “Soldiers of Allah” (mujahed-din).
The camp at Leda looks cramped. The facility is squalid and lacks basic amenities. Children roam around the narrow rows of tin and bamboo huts. They lack access to education, medical care and sanitation.
A Rohingya woman places her jar in a queue to collect water at the Leda Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh Border Guard soldiers keep a watch for Rohingya refugees on the Naf River, that runs along Myanmar-Bangladesh border from where they enter the country illegally.

Someone erects walls, others shoot bullets,

 

Source: Al-Jazeera . The article has been largely edited.