Rohingya refugees face uncertain future in Bangladesh

Yasmin Aara, a mother of two, sits beside a remote hillside road in the jungle of south-eastern Bangladesh. She and six other women clad in black burkas are begging, but they receive little from passers-by.

Aara, 18, says the Myanmar army slaughtered her woodcutter husband Kamal Ahmed at his home in late October. "A group of 20 men in uniform cut my husband into pieces," Aara says. Civilians came along with the army to set fire to her small hut in a village in Myanmar's Rakhine state, she says.

Aara hid in hills of Myanmar for nearly a month, then crossed into Bangladesh with her two children, aged two and three-and-a-half. She has been on the run since then, without eating a meal most days. She eventually reached the southern Bangladeshi sub-district of Ukhiya, some 30 kilometres from the border, where tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees have been living in squalid camps for decades.

More than 66,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar's Rakhine state are estimated to have crossed into Bangladesh after the Myanmar military launched so-called counter-insurgency sweeps in October, leaving behind land, homes, clothes, utensils, cattle and relatives at their ancestral villages.

Those who have arrived at the Bangladeshi refugee camps in Kutupalong, Nayapara and Leda in Cox's Bazar have similar stories to Aara's.

"I left after my husband and three minor children were thrown into fire set to my home by the army," says 38-year-old Ayesha Begum. She says she never wanted to leave her homestead: "We came here to remain alive."

Another woman, an 18-year-old rape victim who arrived in Bangladesh in mid-December, describes seeing more than 100 Rohingya men and women tortured and assaulted when she was taken to an army camp. Not less than 20 women were raped, the young woman says. "I know nothing about the fate of my family there," she says.

Undocumented, the Rohingya Muslim minority have nothing to do in Bangladesh and now beg for a minimum of shelter, food and clothes, as support from non-governmental organisations has been inadequate. The newly arrived refugees have been hit hard by the lack of food.

"I ate rice last night ... and get nothing to eat until today," said Noor Ankit, a skinny nine-year old boy who was sitting with his aunt at the wayside. Ankit survived by hiding under a floor mat as soldiers killed his father and a sister and later travelled along with his aunt to Bangladesh. "Nearly 90 percent of the newcomers are not getting food twice a day," said a senior member of the refugee camp, Shukkur Ali, who called for emergency supplies of food, clothing, shelter and medicine.

The International Organisation of Migration (IOM) estimates that more than 66,000 Rohingya Muslims entered Bangladesh since October, putting extra pressure on humanitarian agency resources.

Only 1,998 households could be served with non-food support while 10,075 families were given warm clothes since the influx began, said IOM spokeswoman Shirin Akhter.

"We are currently exploring possibilities for sustainable shelter solutions to cramped living situation and address health risks," she said.

Muslim-majority Bangladesh, which initially sealed its border with Myanmar to prevent the Rohingya influx, has now been planning better shelters for the refugees.

"We are considering a piece of forest land for makeshift homes for the undocumented Myanmar nationals," said Ali Hossain, chief administrator of the Cox's Bazar district, adding that requests from international aid agencies are also being processed. Talks are underway for the repatriation of the persecuted Muslims back to their homes, he said.

The process for repatriation halted in 2005 due to Myanmar's reluctance to allow home more than 300,000 Rohingya refugees who were driven away from Rakhine in the 1990s by the then military government.

More than 29,000 are documented as refugees. But the prospect of Rohingya repatriation seems elusive since the so-called anti-insurgency clampdown since October, which forced Rohingya Muslims like Yasmin Aara to flee their homes.

"I want to get back to my home with a guarantee that no-one will evict me from my land," says Aara.    (dpa)

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