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More than 100,000 Rohingya refugees who\u2019ve been confined to camps in western Myanmar\u2019s Rakhine state for nearly a decade are asking to be allowed to return home so they can find work and food amid the COVID-19 pandemic, members of the Muslim minority group say.<\/P>
Sheltered in camps near the Rakhine state capital Sittwe, the Rohingya were driven from their homes by ethnic clashes with the state\u2019s majority-Buddhist population in 2012, and had been supported until now by contributions from the U.N. World Food Programme.<\/P>
Deliveries of food have fallen off, though, due to economic disruptions tied to the spread of coronavirus in Myanmar, and the Rohingya now have trouble finding sufficient food, shelter, or work in the camps, one camp resident said.<\/P>
\u201cHow can we eat when we are not allowed to work outside the camps?\u201d asked Maung Kyaw Sein, a resident of the Thekkair-byin refugee camp, adding that he and others have now lived in the camp for around ten years.<\/P>
\u201cWe want to go back,\u201d he said. \u201cWe want to return to our old places, where we can find work and food. We can\u2019t find any work here, and we don\u2019t have enough rice or any other kinds of food.\u201d<\/P>
Deadly ethnic clashes in Rakhine in 2012 destroyed factories and other businesses in Sittwe, killing nearly 200 Rohingya and displacing 140,000 members of the persecuted community, who are denied citizenship and labeled illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. They were settled in 14 camps west of Sittwe after their homes were burned down and their property destroyed during the fighting.<\/P>
Five years after the Sittwe violence, Myanmar’s military launched a scorched-earth campaign against ethnic Rohingya villages in response to attacks by Muslim insurgents on police posts in Rakhine, burning villages, killing residents, and driving 740,000 Rohingya across the border to Bangladesh. About 600,000 Rohingya remain in Rakhine state, which has about 3.1 million people.<\/P>
The 2017 attacks have since been described by international rights groups and foreign governments as constituting acts of \u201cgenocide\u201d and \u201ccrimes against humanity.\u201d<\/P>
Requests ignored<\/P>
The Rohingya in Sittwe have repeatedly asked to be settled again in their former villages along the Bay of Bengal in northern Rakhine, but previous Myanmar governments\u2014including the National League for Democracy government ousted in a Feb. 1 military coup\u2014have ignored their requests without explanation.<\/P>
Although government authorities had previously promised to build new houses for the displaced Rohingya, nothing was ever done, said one resident of the Thekkhair-byin refugee camp named Maung Maung.<\/P>
\u201cWe had to move from Sittwe in 2012 to the refugee camp south of Sittwe, and our entire family now has to live in a 10\u2019 by 10\u2019 room, so we have a lot of difficulties,\u201d he said.<\/P>
\u201cGovernment officials would sometimes come here and say they would give us a house,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cWe asked them instead to let us go back to our former areas, but nothing has happened yet.\u201d<\/P>
Speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons, another refugee said they would like to ask authorities for permission to travel freely and return to their original places of residence because of food shortages in the camps.<\/P>
\u201cIn the past, we had shops and could operate our own businesses, but we can\u2019t do anything here. We hope that the government will give us back our original places,\u201d he said.<\/P>
Myanmar military forces still guard the roads leading to Rohingya refugee camps in Sittwe, and discrimination against the Rohingya continues, local Muslim Rohingya elders say, adding that some Rohingya leave the area illegally by boat each year in attempts to reach Thailand or Malaysia, where they hope to find a better life.<\/P>
Calls requesting comment from the Rakhine State Military Council on the refugees\u2019 demands for repatriation and freedom of movement rang unanswered.<\/P>
Death in detention<\/P>
Ruby Alam, a Rohingya administrator in U Shay Kya village in Rakhine\u2019s Maungdaw township, died in detention this week after being arrested by Myanmar security forces, sources told RFA. His body was brought to the Maungdaw township hospital on Aug. 31, a village administrator said on Wednesday.<\/P>
\u201cWe learned that he was arrested on Aug. 29, and his body was returned to the hospital yesterday morning and then buried in the evening. That\u2019s all we know,\u201d the administrator said, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.<\/P>
Ruby Alam was buried at a Muslim cemetery at around 5:00 p.m., said Shwe Htoo Khaing, chairman of the Maungdaw Karuna Network Funeral Aid Association, whose group was asked by the hospital to help. \u201cIt was our duty to help them. We could not ask what happened,\u201d he said.<\/P>
Reached for comment, Nay Oo\u2014Maungdaw District Administrator for the Military Council\u2014denied any knowledge of Ruby Alam\u2019s death, and no information on why he had been arrested was immediately available. <\/P>
His body bore signs of bruising on his arms and legs, and he was believed to have died of a heart attack, sources said.<\/P>
‘Bengalis’<\/P>
Earlier this week, Myanmar\u2019s ruling junta instructed government employees and administrative staff in a secret memo not to use the term \u201cRohingya\u201d to describe those living in the Sittwe camps or the hundreds of thousands driven by the military into Bangladesh in 2017, sources who received the memo told RFA.<\/P>
Instead, the memo said, the ethnic group should be called \u201cBengalis,\u201d a pejorative term referring to the group\u2019s supposed status as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, though many have lived in Myanmar for generations.<\/P>
The National Unity Government (NUG), formed in opposition to military rule, has promised to amend the country\u2019s constitution to give citizenship to the Rohingya, who are not recognized as an official ethnic group in Myanmar.<\/P>
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Radio Free Asia –Copyright \u00a9 1998-2016, RFA. Used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036Radio Free Europe–Copyright (c) 2015. RFE\/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036. <\/P>
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