'Who will take us?': Myanmar's fleeing Rohingya Muslims

[Nilgiri]

well we took 300k refuges and we have 2000 acre of land for refuges
and the number of refuges will go upto 560k to 600k
while india is deporting them
we are all bengali speaking people in india bangladesh rohingyas
but we are all in different countries
SHW is not our slave she is India slave its was the BDR who let the refugges

We will deport these illegal rohingya and our slave SHW can shed a few tears for optics if she wants....and then go back to business of accommodating our "political" girth as usual.

You on other hand can welcome as many rohingya as you want and have Bengali kumbaya with them all you want. That's your decision. You need not agree with ours, but in the end you respect and accept its our decision to make.

Now go run to your buddy China and get them to vote pro-BD or even "neutral" (say abstain) as @Doyalbaba hollers for.... for the statement condemning MM in UNSC. You have one day left to change their mind.

a decade ago there was a DOCUMENTRY on British television, Channel 4 of how Bangladeshi farmers have been shot dead by Indian BSF for crossing the fields whilst farming. Number of victims run into the hundreds. Also if Bangladesh is not a hostile nation to India why does india feel compelled to fence the entire border with BD with a shoot to kill policy in place?

BD govt (who we influence/control) only exercises limited security control on its riff raff people esp w.r.t migration/smuggling/illegal activity. Hence fence is on only one side and UN recognises only one country as having to host millions of illegals from the other currently (thus the 1st step is always to choke and stop the flow before we deal more effectively with long term solution of those already infiltrated inside). Hence we need border to be secured with as much violent means as required.....because the people transiting only understand that language given they are not educated or civilised. These are the same people that blindly believe (and support because it gives them an easy bogeyman) their govt claims of 3 million killed by Pakistan in 1971, just remember that.

There is no genetic difference between W Bengalis and BD'shis. There was also massive cross-border migration during 1947 where Muslims mgrated from West Bengal to BD and Hindus from BD to West Bengal.

Where did I say purely genetic? There may be a cpl genetic differences overall, nothing major....but the main differences lie elsewhere (aforementioned culture, development, language variant). Its plain as day to see intelligence and cultural inertia of West Bengalis compared to Bangladeshis (you can compare even just their elites). That's not saying its impossible with the correct investment and time and priority given in BD to pursuing higher and better education access etc to meet the Bengali potential illustrated by West Bengalis. It's just not in evidence right now....and it is why the recent (post 1971) influx of BD illegals (mostly happened in the 80s and 90s but also more recent than that) stand out all the more to West Bengalis and North Easterners.

With BD's much stronger economy, any migration is more likely to be from West bengal to BD, rather than the other way round!

BD economy = joke. You have half the realised consumption and half the worker productivity of Indian average. You are just coming from a way worse situation from before, so you don't realise how bad you still are compared to Indian average (which is where West Bengal more or less is at economically).

As for the "migration" likely to be reversed, it simply doesn't show in the UN published numbers. Hence why you dodge me asking you to show where even BD govt officially claims it....because BD govt knows better....whatever some of their low end bureaucrats and ministers may spout from time to time for domestic optics and consumption.

Whereas India in comparison has brought up BD illegal numbers in parliament when questions raised and they are thus on official statements.

United Nations may differ on the scale (India says 20 million figure more or less, UN normally puts at anywhere between 3 - 10 million depending on generation and recency of what constitutes an "illegal")....but they definitely agree its an established and immensely skewed uni-directional phenomenon.

 

[Banglar Bir]

12:00 AM, September 15, 2017 / LAST MODIFIED: 02:52 AM, September 15, 2017
Same chair, but worlds apart

Samir Uddin
Pinaki Roy and Mohammad Ali Jinnat

Samir Uddin, who rushed to help the distressed throughout his life, has now grown so old that he can't even move on his own. Until recently, he used to sit on his favourite wooden easy chair at a corner of his homeyard in Rakhine the entire day. Passers-by would stop and greet him out of respect.

These days, the Rohingya man still sits on the same chair, but the place is not the same. For him, it is an unknown place with almost no familiar faces.

Although the violence broke out in Rakhine on August 25, Samir and his family moved to Bangladesh last week. They tried their best to stay there in vain.

Leaving a bungalow, 15 acres of land and several cattle behind, the family along with 200 other refugees from different villages of Rakhine has taken shelter at Hazi Md Hossain Government Primary School near Lambabil area. As Samir cannot walk, his grandsons carried him along with the easy chair to Teknaf.

“I never imagined that I would ever have to leave my village this way,” said an emotional Samir who was accompanied by his elder son Abdul Habib, aged over 70 years, and one of his daughters, Bilkis, 65.

Though Samir is now around 100, he still remembers a lot about the past. Clad in a white panjabi and a lungi, which became quite dirty over the days, he recalled some of his memories.

“I gave shelter to some refugees from Bangladesh during the 1971 Liberation War. A few Bengali families lived in my house for months,” he said sitting on the easy chair at the school.

Later in 1978, Samir fled to Bangladesh along with his family members during an army crackdown on the Rohingyas in Myanmar.

“During that time, we stayed at Arzumanpara [in Teknaf] for days. I thought I got shelter because I gave shelter to someone in the past. I thought the equation was over. But I have come here once again.”

Samir said he did not want to stay here as a refugee for long.

His son Abdul said their home was in Aischor village, around eight kilometres off the banks of the Naf river.

“My sons used to cultivate rice in a few acres of land. We had plenty of food at home. My father even used to donate money to the poor and local mosques,” he said, adding now his family depends entirely on relief to survive.

"One Abdul Zalil and his family from Maheshkaliapara

had taken shelter in our home in 1971. Zalil is dead and we are looking for his sons,” said Abdul.

Zafar Alam Chowdhury, former president of Teknaf Upazila Awami League, lives a few hundred yards from the Hazi Md Hossain Government Primary School.

Asked, he said he himself along with his family took shelter in Arakan during the war in 1971.

"Nearly one lakh people from Teknaf took refuge in different villages in Arakan. I stayed in a village called Guruterbil near Bolibazar," said Zafar, 82.

Nibedita Bhattachariya, headmistress of the school, said nearly 300 people from Myanmar came and started staying at the institution a few days ago.

"We are facing difficulties in running our regular academic activities. But still, I don't know how to tell the Rohingyas to leave. Where would they go?” she asked.
http://www.thedailystar.net/frontpa...ee-crisis-the-same-chair-worlds-apart-1462363

 

[Banglar Bir]

12:00 AM, September 16, 2017 / LAST MODIFIED: 05:03 PM, September 18, 2017
The forgotten citizens of Rakhine State

Ananta Yusuf
The forebears of Mohammad Alam and Mohammad Ali, two Rohingya refugees, were Myanmar citizens. They had been in Myanmar for generations.

But Alam and Ali are not rightful citizens of the country. Having white cards, they had voted in the 2010 general elections. But now they have blue cards, under which they have very limited rights.

Escaping violence in Rakhine State, they entered Bangladesh early this month. The two along with their 31 family members have taken refuge at the unregistered Rohingya camp in Taknaf's Kanjhan Para.

The fate of the ethnic minority changed with the changing of policies by the government. Many legal Myanmar citizens from the Rohingya community became illegal immigrants as the colours of their identity cards changed over the years. The government curtailed some of their basic civil rights.

Talking to The Daily Star on September 7, Alam said he walked four days to reach Teknuf in Cox's Bazar from Maungdaw district of Rakhine.

The voting cards that Mohammad Alam used in 2010 elections. Photo: Ananta Yusuf
Looking exhausted and distressed, he was reminiscing about his days in Rakhine. “We have proper land records. My grandparents and parents got Myanmar citizenship using their land deeds.”

He has brought those papers with him to Bangladesh. He is hopeful about regaining his land on return to Myanmar someday.

Alam showed some citizenship documents to this correspondent. He was holding tight three cards registered in 1952. These are his precious treasure as he finds a glimpse of hope to become a rightful Myanmar citizen.

In fact, the Myanmar government previously had taken back only those Rohingyas who managed to bring documents with them to Bangladesh. The undocumented remained in different refugee camps in Cox's Bazar.

Refugees like Alam and Ali are still preserving the cards very carefully. The 65-year-old pieces of paper have become brown and somewhat tattered. Each of the documents has the cardholder's photograph, name, date and place of birth, father's name and address. All the information is written in Burmese.

Alam (third from left) with his family members in a photo taken by immigration officials in January this year. Photo: Ananta Yusuf
At the bottom, there is the date of issuance in English. A fingerprint of the cardholder and the signature of the issuer government official are on the back of the card.

The then Myanmar government introduced a law, Union Citizenship Act 1948, under which members of only eight ethnic minority communities were considered citizens. The Rohingyas were taken off the list of the minority communities.

However, a few Rohingyas, including the forebears of Alam and Ali, got citizenship cards when the government distributed National Registration Cards (NRC) under the law in 1951.

The Myanmar government is now rejecting the NRCs.
Asked why the army was torching villages in Rakhine, Ali, aged about 60, said: “I believe the government inflicted torture on the Rohingyas in an attempt to destroy all the evidence of our citizenship.”

The citizenship card of his father. Photo: Ananta Yusuf
After seizing power in a coup d'état in 1962, military ruler Ne Win started restricting movements of Rohingyas in the country. Before that, holders of NRC could receive good education, health service and other government facilities.

But things changed completely when the Citizenship Act, 1982, came into force. It limited participation of Rohingyas in politics.

Interestingly, according to article 6 of the act, those who had citizenship cards were to be recognised as Myanmar citizens. But the military junta overlooked the legal provision and claimed that Rohingyas were illegal migrants from Bangladesh and trying to get Myanmar citizenship hiding their Bengali identity.

The citizenship card of his grandmother. Photo: Ananta Yusuf
Ali claimed that the government started torturing them after the Citizenship Verification Campaign had began in 1989. “At that time the government didn't upgrade our cards and even the citizenships of the descendants of lawful citizens were revoked”.

He said his family had submitted all the necessary documents, including land records, but the government ignored those.

A new type of card, Citizenship Scrutiny Card, was distributed instead of the National Registration Cards in 1989 through the so called Citizen Verification Campaign. The Rohingyas were not provided with the new cards. Instead, they were given a white card in 1995, and around 4,00,000 Rohingyas from 13 townships were registered under white cards.

Holders of white cards were merely considered as immigrants. Ali said this card was necessary for availing trade permission, education, healthcare facility and travel within the country. “You can't even get admitted to a hospital if you don't have a white card. Many people in our village remained out of the purview of the medical treatment as they had no cards.

“After 1995, government officials used to visit our home every year to take family photographs. The government considered us immigrants though our forebears were Myanmar citizens.”

His temporary immigration card issued in 2015. Photo: Ananta Yusuf
Another Rohingya refugee Shamsul Alam informed said a Rohingya without a white card could not even visit a bazar, let alone setting up a business. All the undocumented people have been living in camps in Rakhine.

The Rohingyas even didn't get permission for getting married. Police would stop them verifying their cards at almost all locations.

“After 1995, many of our women came to Bangladesh to get married with Rohingyas living in camps here to avoid bribing the Myanmar army for marriage. Besides, there were many other hassles,” said Shamsul from Maungdaw, now living in Kutupalong camp of Ukhia.

In 2015, the Myanmar immigration ministry abrogated the white cards and distributed green and blue cards among the Rohingyas. According to the ministry, holders of green cards would be able to apply for citizenship directly. The blue cards had a two-year tenure which could be extended upon expiry.

Not a single Rohingya has a green card in Myanmar. The new cards have curtailed more citizen facilities that they had enjoyed before. The helpless people have to take permission from the government and face a lot of hassles even for securing the most basic needs.

The discriminations against the Rohingya Muslims have been going on for decades. Their miseries have increased in the last three weeks as they are being evicted from their homes and killed, raped and looted.

The Rohingyas are simple people who want to live in peace and with dignity. Having a small shanty now seems to be a far cry for the Rohingyas -- the most persecuted ethnic minority community in the world.
http://www.thedailystar.net/frontpa...-the-forgotten-citizens-rakhine-state-1462885

 

[Banglar Bir]

The Forgotten Past
1942 #Rohingya Massacre of #Arakan in Rohingya Language (with English Subtitle)

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