DHAKA: Rohingya Muslim refugees in Bangladesh held a “silent protest” on Tuesday (Aug 25) to mark the third anniversary of clashes between Rohingya insurgents and Myanmar security forces that set off a huge movement into Bangladesh of people seeking safety.
More than a million Rohingya live in the world’s largest refugee settlement in southern Bangladesh, with little prospect of returning to Myanmar, where they are mostly denied citizenship and other rights.
The refugees had said that because of the novel coronavirus they would not hold a mass gathering to mark what they call “Remembrance Day”. Authorities say 88 cases of the virus have been found in the camps and six people have died.
Three years ago, Rohingya insurgents raided 30 police posts and an army base in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, killing at least 12 members of the security forces.
The Myanmar military crackdown that followed forced more than 730,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh, joining more than 200,000 already there.
Three years later and with no work or decent education for their children, there is little prospect of a return to the country, where members of the mostly Muslim minority have long been treated as inferior intruders.
Myanmar’s military “killed more than 10,000 of our people. They carried out mass murders and rapes and drove our people from their home”, Mohib Ullah, a Rohingya leader in the camps, told AFP.
For the second anniversary last year, Ullah led a rally of about 200,000 protesters at Kutupalong, the largest of the network of camps in southeast Bangladesh, where 600,000 people live in cramped and unsanitary conditions.
A Rohingya woman climbs a hill as she goes back to her makeshift home in Jamtoli refugee camp, near Ukhia in Bangladesh. (AFP/Munir Uz zaman)
But the Bangladeshi authorities, increasingly impatient with the Rohingya and who a year ago cut Internet access in the camps, have banned gatherings because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The sprawling camps have been cut off from the rest of Bangladesh, with the military erecting barbed-wire fences around the perimeters. Inside, movement has been restricted.
In some rare good news for the refugees, Bangladesh said on Monday it would soon lift the ban on high-speed mobile Internet in the camps that authorities imposed last year citing concern that social media would be used to stir panic.
“APARTHEID”
Bangladesh has signed an agreement with Myanmar to return the refugees. But the Rohingya refuse to go without guarantees for their safety and proper rights.
About 600,000 Rohingya remain in Myanmar, but most are not regarded as citizens, living in what Amnesty International describes as “apartheid” conditions.
Rohingya men carry bricks for construction work in Jamtoli refugee camp, near Ukhia, Bangladesh. (AFP/Munir Uz zaman)
The Rohingya are not convinced of the “sincerity of the Myanmar authorities”, Bangladesh foreign secretary Masud bin Momen said.
Khin Maung, a 25-year-old Rohingya activist who lost 10 relatives in the horrors of 2017, said the mood in the camps was very depressed.
“We want justice for the murders. We also want to go back home. But I don’t see any immediate hopes. It may take years,” Maung, who leads a Rohingya youth group, said.
He said the desperation had led hundreds to flee the camps this year on rickety boats often arranged by unscrupulous trafficking gangs.
At least 24 refugees are believed to have drowned off Malaysia last month in the latest in a string of tragedies. The lone survivor managed to swim to shore.
“Myanmar needs to accept an international solution that provides for the safe, voluntary return of Rohingya refugees, while an understandably stretched Bangladesh should not make conditions inhospitable for refugees who have nowhere to go,” said Brad Adams from Human Rights Watch.