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REUTERS: NEW ROHINGYA INFLUX AND UN
Subject: REUTERS: NEW ROHINGYA INFLUX AND UNHCR IN DILEMMA
ASIA: NEW BURMESE REFUGEES POSE DILEMMA FOR UN AGENCY
BANGLADESH INFLUX (FEATURE)
By Alistair Lyon of Reuters
TEKNAF, Bangladesh, Reuter - Amid lush green fields in sight of
surf pounding in from the Bay of Bengal, Jafar Ahmed explained why
life in Burma had become unbearable.
"Twenty days before we left our village of Inn Chaung, the
military took me for forced labour," he said. "They said it was for
10 days, but they kept me for 16."
"They tax us and make us give donations, such as logs, to their
requirements. If we can't pay, they take us to a Nasaka (border
force) camp and torture us."
Ahmed, a 40-year-old labourer, said he had once spent 24 hours
with his legs held in wooden stocks at a Nasaka camp.
The Rangoon military government has long denied reports of
ill-treatment of minority Muslims, or Rohingyas, in its
impoverished northern province of Rakhine.
Now Ahmed, his wife and three children are part of a group of
six families sheltering in a hut on a Bangladeshi peninsula
separated from their homeland by the broad Naf River.
They arrived in April after paying 500 kyat (about $A4.60) or
seven times a day labourer's wage) a head for passage, including
bribes to Nasaka border troops to look the other way.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that
5,500 Rohingyas have fled to Bangladesh since March, while other
relief agencies say there may be up to 10,000.
The influx is something of an embarassment for the UNHCR, trying
to meet its target of repatriating the last 50,000 of 250,000
Rohingyas who fled to Bangladesh in 1991 and 1992.
The UN agency, keen to anchor the 200,000 returnees to their
villages and head off any fresh exodus, fears that any move to help
the newcomers would spur others to follow.
"If we give food to this group, we'll attract 50,000 more the
next day," UNHCR representative Canh Nguyen-Tang told Reuters in
Dhaka. "We don't want to create a 'pull' factor."
Yet the hardships cited by Ahmed and other new arrivals appear
identical to those claimed by their fellow-Rohingyas who were
accepted as refugees after the original mass flight.
Bangladesh, at first unwilling to admit the existence of any
newcomers, now says they are illegal immigrants fleeing poverty,
not persecution, and must be deported.
UN officials said economic conditions for Rohingyas, mostly
uneducated farm workers, had worsened after a cyclone in November
cut rice output by up to 20 per cent. Rangoon helped push up prices
by demanding the same rice tax as before.
"This two-way traffic of influx and repatriation has created a
very odd situation," said Dick van der Tak, representative of the
medical relief agency Medecins sans Frontieres.
"We're afraid that if everyone classifies them as economic
migrants, we'll lose sight of the context - the reasons for their
poverty and the whole human rights situation in Burma."
The UNHCR, yet to define its policy on the newcomers, hopes that
its staff stationed in mainly Buddhist Burma's neglected Rakhine
province can intercede with its military rulers to ease the plight
of Rohingyas and encourage them to stay put.
"We have organised an information campaign asking people to
return to their villages of origin and contacted the authorities to
provide transport back home," Tang said.
He argued that compulsory labour, while an issue of great
concern to the UNHCR, did not count as persecution of Rohingyas
because it was prevalent throughout Burma.
At the same time, he said, Rohingyas are not recognised as full
citizens, but only as "residents" of Burma. And they do not have
freedom of movement, needing permission from the military
authorities if they want to leave their home villages.
The 50,000 remaining refugees live under UNHCR protection in
camps run by Bangladeshi officials. They may not work, or leave the
camps without permits, but are relatively secure.
The new arrivals must seek shelter where they can and are
vulnerable to summary deportation and abuse.
In April, an attempt by a river patrol of the paramilitary
Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) to force a boatful of incoming Burmese back
across the river ended in disaster.
The boatman jumped overboard in the dark, the drifting boat
capsized after getting tangled in fishing nets and 15 people - five
women and 10 children - drowned.
Anjuma, a 12-year-old Rohingya girl who arrived in the second
week of May, said she had been gang-raped by three BDR soldiers who
had previously ordered her family and six others staying in a
village near Teknaf to return to Burma.
An examination by a doctor working for an international relief
agency appeared to confirm sexual assault.
Major Lal Mohammad at BDR headquarters in Teknaf said a military
investigation was under way. "If it is true that our soldiers were
involved, they will be punished," he added.
REUTER bwl