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CAIRO — Fleeing oppression at their homeland for a better life, Muslim refugees from Myanmar are tasting abuses and mistreatment in neighboring Bangladesh, reported The New York Times on Friday, February 19
“Over the last few months we have treated victims of violence, people who claim to have been beaten by the police, claim to have been beaten by members of the host population,” said Paul Critchley, head of mission in Bangladesh for the aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres.
Myanmarese Muslim refugees, known as Rohingya, are complaining of daily abuses and mistreatment at the hands of police and locals.
Citing beatings and assaults, many of the refugees say that the police had forced many of them into river to swim back to Myanmar.
“We have treated patients for beatings, for machete wounds and for rape,” said Critchley.
“This is continuing today.”
Every year, thousands of minority Muslim Rohingyas flee Myanmar in wooden boats, embarking on a hazardous journey to Thailand or Malaysia in search of a better life.
While some find work as illegal laborers, others are arrested, detained and "repatriated" to a military-ruled country that washed its hands of them decades ago.
Rohingyas say they are deprived of free movement, education and employment in their homeland.
They are not recognized as an ethnic minority by Myanmar and say they suffer human rights abuses at the hands of government officials.
Many have sought refuge in neighboring Bangladesh, living in mud huts covered in plastic sheets and tree branches, which provide poor shelter during monsoon rains that cause mudslides and expose them to waterborne diseases.
Bangladesh says there are about 28,000 registered Rohingya refugees in two UN camps near the southeastern resort of Cox's Bazaar.
No Life
Packed into UN-run camps, thousands of Rohingyas are lacking almost everything.
“They cannot receive general food distribution,” Critchley said.
“It is illegal for them to work. All they can legally do in Bangladesh is starve to death.”
Struggling to survive, most Rohingyas work mostly as day laborers, servants or pedicab drivers.
They lack almost everything, from rights, education to other government services.
“We cannot move around to find work,” said Hasan, 40, a day laborer who lives with his wife and three children in a dirt-floored hovel made of sticks, scrap wood and plastic sheeting.
Hasan says he had no way to feed his family.
“There is a checkpoint nearby where they’re catching people and arresting them,” he said.
“We aren’t receiving any help. No one can borrow money from each other. Everybody’s in crisis now.”
David Mathieson, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, said Rohingyas had been victims of a "pattern of abuses" in Bangladesh for more than 30 years and the government had made it clear it wanted rid of them.
"It's not as if these incidents came out of the blue,” he said.
“They're part of a very long-running brutal process of making life so uncomfortable for the people in the camp that they'll return to Burma," he said, referring to Myanmar by its formername.
"They fled some absolutely horrific human rights violations in their own country. They're justifiably too frightened to return."
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