Rohingyas long for Rakhine homes, but fear more bloodbath

COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh — Jamila's hut squats on the bare, filthy ground on a landslide-prone hillside reeking in the squalor and tropical heat of one of the world's most crowded refugee camps in southeastern Bangladesh.

Despite the never-ending uncertainty, the distraught mother of six says there is at least no threat of the horrific killings, torture, burnings and human rights catastrophe that claimed the lives of her husband and a son in their Rakhine homeland in Myanmar last year. The violence, blamed on Myanmar forces, horrified her and her remaining five children into fleeing aboard a flimsy boat in a perilous, 15-day escape to neighboring Bangladesh.

"My husband and son were slaughtered by the Myanmar army," Jamila told GMA News Online, her voice shaking as she started to weep and recount her family's plight. "We're eight in the family. I have six children but only six of us are here now because they killed my husband and son on August 28 last year."

"It took us around 15 days to travel to Bangladesh from Myanmar by boat," said Jamila, who like many Rohingyas, uses one name. "We got to Bangladesh in a hilly area without food so the situation is not good and we left our house with just the clothes we were wearing. There were thousands of us who came here."

Wearing donated clothes and keeping a wary eye on her children, the 35-year-old is among hundreds of thousands of ethnic Muslims, called Rohingyas, who have temporarily camped out in Bangladeshi's Kutapalong region in Cox's Bazar. The evacuation camp, walled with tin sheets and bamboo stakes from the rest of Bangladesh, used to be a jungle that was slowly cleared of trees to accommodate a growing number of desperate Rohingya refugees.

Photo by Michaela del Callar

Shacks of scrap wood, plastic and tin cram the slopes of soft, reddish soil and refugees, many of them barefoot, walk along narrow trails that crisscross the shantytown, which resembles a mine pit.

Summers bring extreme heat and dust and rains turn the crude encampment into a muddy bog. When clouds come in the monsoon months, the refugees say they fear the impending downpour may loosen the hillside and bury them all alive.

But more than the travails of day-to-day survival, the feeling of being regarded as human burdens unwanted by any country pains them most.

Myanmarese authorities regard Jamila and other Rohingyas as Bangladeshi natives, or Bengalis. Impoverished Bangladesh says it can't afford to host them for long and that Myanmar should take them back and stop the "genocide" that drives the Muslim villagers out of Myanmar, a largely Buddhist nation.

"The Myanmar government is pressuring us to get MVCs (Myanmar Verification Card) and we do not agree to get the card and state there that we are Bengalis," Jamila said.

'Complex situation'

Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury, Bangladesh Speaker of Parliament, told visiting foreign journalists that, "It's a complex situation."

"We have to persuade Myanmar to take them back. We are a small country and it is very difficult to accommodate them," Chaudhury said. "We will have them here until such process can be worked out. These people belong to Myanmar and they have to go back."

No specific deadline has been set for the Rohingyas to return to Myanmar.

Like homeless orphans, the Rohingyas have suffered immensely. If Jamila has a choice, she said she yearns to return to Rakhine because it's her and her family's birthplace.

"If the situation becomes stable in Myanmar, we will go back. Our home is there. But we want peace and we do not want to live in fear anymore," Jamila said.

She pleaded to the Myanmar government: "We want peace from Myanmar. Myanmar killed my husband, my child. They tortured my people. Give us peace."

Another refugee, Jahed, who said his parents were killed by Myanmar forces, said life in Cox Bazar has been better but added he, his wife and three children hope they could return to their ancestral land in Rakhine if the atrocities and abuses there would end.

"We can not go out of our house anytime because we need permission from the army. There are army people staying in villages. We are forbidden to go to the mosques to say our prayer," the jobless, 30-year-old said.

According to the Bangladesh government, there are now an estimated 1.2 million Rohingyas in its territory and more continue to arrive each day.

Bangladesh plans to transfer about 100,000 Rohingyas to the island of Bhashan Char to decongest the Cox’s Bazar camps. Aid workers have opposed the plan, saying the far-flung island is uninhabitable and flood-prone and will hamper delivery of aid, specially in the rainy monsoon season.

Temporary solution

Bangladeshi officials stressed that its accommodation of the Rohingyas is only a temporary solution and added that the refugee crisis problem could be solved if Myanmar stops the harassment in Rakhine to stem the exodus of  refugees to Bangladesh, India, Malaysia and Indonesia.

"Movements will go on if atrocities will not stop from the other end," said Nikar Jaman, a Bangladeshi official who oversees the camp in Kutapalong.

Myanmar troops led a brutal crackdown in Rakhine state in what the government said was a response to terrorist attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, or ARSA, on 30 Myanmarese police outposts and a military base in August last year. Thousands of Rohingyas fled from the violence, with most escaping to neighboring Bangladesh by land and sea.

H T Imam, a political adviser to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said the influx of Rohingyas has not only put a strain on Bangladesh's national budget, but is creating problems for local Bangladeshis.

"The rations and the food they are getting are much better than what the locals have. They say, `We're being displaced ourselves because we have to share our own accommodation,'" Imam said.

Myanmar is committing mass murder against Rohingya Muslims, Imam said.

"What else can you call it that houses are being burned, people are being slashed and young children are being thrown into water. How would you define it? It's genocide," he said.

Bangladesh has called on Myanmar to take back the displaced Rohingyas and to recognize them as its citizens. Last month, the Bangladeshi prime minister presented a five-point proposal during the 72nd UN General Assembly. She called on Myanmar to "unconditionally stop the violence and the practice of ethnic cleansing in the Rakhine State immediately and forever."

She asked the UN Secretary General to send a fact-finding mission to Myanmar, ensure the "sustainable return of all forcibly displaced Rohingyas" from Bangladesh to their homes in Myanmar and suggested that UN-supervised "safe zones" be established in Myanmar to protect civilians "irrespective of religion and ethnicity."

Aside from the UN, Bangladesh has called on the international community, particularly India and China, which have close ties with Myanmar, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, to exert pressure on Aung San Suu Kyi's government.

Amid the killings and violence, ASEAN has kept quiet and refused to rebuke Myanmar, a member of the 10-nation grouping.

ASEAN has long been criticized and dismissed as an irrelevant bloc of nations for looking the other way when a member state commits widespread human rights abuses. While ASEAN has refused to hold Myanmar to account, Bangladeshi officials have praised Malaysia and Indonesia, which also belong to the regional group, for speaking up on the atrocities in Rakhine and protesting Myanmar's actions.

The Philippines has expressed concern over the violence in Northern Rakhine State, but it voted against a draft UN resolution calling for Myanmar's accountability on the human rights abuses against the Rohingyas.

Without a solution in sight, a new generation of Rohingyas and their parents face uncertainties and are hoping the UN and the international community could stop the violence that has claimed the lives of about 6,000 people since the Rakhine crackdown commenced last year. Many remain traumatized by the loss of loved ones and homes and surviving parents worry over the future awaiting their children.

In Cox Bazar's Rohingya encampments, barefoot children waved excitedly when a bus carrying journalists passed by. Some later gamely posed for pictures and broke into smiles and laughter when shown their images on camera screens. They brimmed with innocence and excitement.

"I came here one year ago, I'm very happy to be here. This country is very peaceful," said Ebrahim, a young Rohingya.

"There are benefits here, but I still want to go back to Myanmar," Ebrahim said. "This is not my country. It's not really my home. I hope it will be like this in Myanmar. No fighting. I want to study and go to school." — RSJ, GMA News