Myanmar boat people swap violence for desperation
GOLAR PARA, Bangladesh (Reuters) - At first, the boat bobbing in the water in the middle of the night appeared to be empty. But when Bangladeshi villagers took a closer look, they found a baby too weak to cry, a refugee from marauding mobs in Myanmar apparently abandoned by her family.
The cleft-lipped infant, just weeks old, is among hundreds of Rohingya Muslims who fled this month's sectarian violence in Myanmar's western state of Rakhine, packing themselves into rough wooden boats and heading for the shores of neighboring Bangladesh.
No one knows how many made it ashore. Bangladesh has ordered its border guards to push the boats back, determined that - with at least quarter of a million "illegal migrants" already here - there must be no more.
The baby, named Fatima by the family that has taken her in, is out of the danger that she and her family faced in Myanmar, but she joins a throng of stateless people in southeast Bangladesh who - for the most part - lead desperate lives of squalor, deprivation and discrimination.
Among them is Mohammad Kamal, a young religious leader from Rakhine's Maungdaw district, where ferocious violence erupted on June 9 between Rohingyas and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and spread across the state. He escaped to Bangladesh in 2006 after his brother and others were jailed in a crackdown on Muslim clerics.
Kamal, now 28, settled in a makeshift "unregistered" camp, where - along with some 20,000 others - he is not recognized as a refugee and where even international aid agencies have to work under the radar because Bangladesh has not granted them legal status.
"I went out for a walk one day last year and was arrested because I had no documents," said Kamal, pulling up a trouser leg to show a line of angry sores that broke out during the following nine months he spent in jail.
Behind him, naked children play in a muddy pool and the rickety dwellings of an overcrowded shanty town - his camp - rise up, lashed by monsoon rains.
In 2010, the authorities forcibly evicted thousands from a makeshift camp. The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres recounted at the time that some Rohingyas had been thrown into the Naf River and told to swim the 3 km (2 miles) back to Myanmar, and the organization said it had treated many for beatings, machete wounds and even rape.
"A DESPERATE LIFE"
Craig Sanders, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees' representative in Dhaka, said that although Bangladesh has disowned the Rohingyas - dubbing them illegal economic migrants - it has shown "tremendous generosity over many years"
Rohingyas first came in large numbers to the South Asian nation in 1973, and over the years gained a reputation for drug-smuggling, gun-running and human trafficking.
A sudden flood of more than quarter of a million arrived in 1991-92 after a spasm of repression by the security forces in military-ruled Myanmar. Those that remain from that wave, now numbering some 30,000, live in two official camps where the U.N. provides everything from shelter and water supply to healthcare and schooling.
But at least 200,000 others - probably many more - have settled on the Bangladesh side of the 200-km (125-mile) border, mingling with the population where they struggle to find employment or squeezing into unofficial camps.
It is these "unregistered" Rohingyas who are most vulnerable.
"It's an extremely desperate life for these people," said one worker for a humanitarian group that provides assistance illegally at one camp, asking not to be named. "They have been here for such a long time and there is no prospect of change."
UNHCR's Sanders has crossed swords with the government in recent days over its decision to turn back the boatloads of traumatized Rohingyas.
"Bangladesh, one more time, is being urged to step forward to deal with a situation that is not of their making," he said. "We are not trying to push them into a corner on this issue, but there is a question of fair and right treatment here."
BANGLADESH SAYS "NO MORE"
The cleft-lipped infant, just weeks old, is among hundreds of Rohingya Muslims who fled this month's sectarian violence in Myanmar's western state of Rakhine, packing themselves into rough wooden boats and heading for the shores of neighboring Bangladesh.
No one knows how many made it ashore. Bangladesh has ordered its border guards to push the boats back, determined that - with at least quarter of a million "illegal migrants" already here - there must be no more.
The baby, named Fatima by the family that has taken her in, is out of the danger that she and her family faced in Myanmar, but she joins a throng of stateless people in southeast Bangladesh who - for the most part - lead desperate lives of squalor, deprivation and discrimination.
Among them is Mohammad Kamal, a young religious leader from Rakhine's Maungdaw district, where ferocious violence erupted on June 9 between Rohingyas and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and spread across the state. He escaped to Bangladesh in 2006 after his brother and others were jailed in a crackdown on Muslim clerics.
Kamal, now 28, settled in a makeshift "unregistered" camp, where - along with some 20,000 others - he is not recognized as a refugee and where even international aid agencies have to work under the radar because Bangladesh has not granted them legal status.
"I went out for a walk one day last year and was arrested because I had no documents," said Kamal, pulling up a trouser leg to show a line of angry sores that broke out during the following nine months he spent in jail.
Behind him, naked children play in a muddy pool and the rickety dwellings of an overcrowded shanty town - his camp - rise up, lashed by monsoon rains.
In 2010, the authorities forcibly evicted thousands from a makeshift camp. The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres recounted at the time that some Rohingyas had been thrown into the Naf River and told to swim the 3 km (2 miles) back to Myanmar, and the organization said it had treated many for beatings, machete wounds and even rape.
"A DESPERATE LIFE"
Craig Sanders, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees' representative in Dhaka, said that although Bangladesh has disowned the Rohingyas - dubbing them illegal economic migrants - it has shown "tremendous generosity over many years"
Rohingyas first came in large numbers to the South Asian nation in 1973, and over the years gained a reputation for drug-smuggling, gun-running and human trafficking.
A sudden flood of more than quarter of a million arrived in 1991-92 after a spasm of repression by the security forces in military-ruled Myanmar. Those that remain from that wave, now numbering some 30,000, live in two official camps where the U.N. provides everything from shelter and water supply to healthcare and schooling.
But at least 200,000 others - probably many more - have settled on the Bangladesh side of the 200-km (125-mile) border, mingling with the population where they struggle to find employment or squeezing into unofficial camps.
It is these "unregistered" Rohingyas who are most vulnerable.
"It's an extremely desperate life for these people," said one worker for a humanitarian group that provides assistance illegally at one camp, asking not to be named. "They have been here for such a long time and there is no prospect of change."
UNHCR's Sanders has crossed swords with the government in recent days over its decision to turn back the boatloads of traumatized Rohingyas.
"Bangladesh, one more time, is being urged to step forward to deal with a situation that is not of their making," he said. "We are not trying to push them into a corner on this issue, but there is a question of fair and right treatment here."
BANGLADESH SAYS "NO MORE"
