SLORC'S CONTINUOUS HUMAN RIGHTS VIO

[moe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Subject: SLORC'S CONTINUOUS HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS



 Thousands of Burmese Moslems flee into Bangladesh

 09:40 a.m. Jul 15, 1997 Eastern 

 By Mohammad Nurul Islam 

 COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh, July 15 (Reuter) - Nearly 15,000
 Burmese Moslems, driven by hunger and military persecution, have
 fled into Bangladesh in the past three months, officials and border
 guards said on Tuesday. 

 ``It has been an endless trickle,'' Lieutenant-Colonel Rafiqul Hannan
 of the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) border force told Reuters. 

 He said the BDR had arrested some 2,000 non-registered Burmese
 Moslems, called Rohingyas, over the past three months and pushed
 them back across the frontier Naf river. 

 The new influx began as Bangladesh was awaiting to repatriate some
 21,500 Rohingyas who have been living in refugee camps in Cox's
 Bazar district, bordering Arakan, for more than four years. 

 More than 250,000 Rohingyas fled to southeastern Bangladesh in
 early 1992 from Arakan, Burma's only Moslem-majority province,
 complaining of military persecution and forced labour. 

 Repatriation, supervised by the U.N. High Commissioner for
 Refugees (UNHCR), began in September that year following an
 agreement between Dhaka and Rangoon. 

 The process stopped in early April. Bangladesh blamed the
 ``reluctance'' of Burmese immigration officials in giving clearance to
 the home-bound refugees. 

 Mohammad Yunus and his 10-member family arrived in Bangladesh
 from Arakan on July 2, along with 30 other families. They have been
 living in shanties built illegally on the outskirts of Cox's Bazar. 

 ``We were landless and usually bought our food by selling labour.
 But in recent months food prices (in Arakan) have more than
 doubled,'' Yunus, 55, explained. 

 ``And (Burmese) soldiers forced us to work at military sites and
 often did not pay for it. They imposed restrictions on our movement
 from one village to another,'' he said. 

 ``We have often been tortured for refusing to give forced labour.
 Sometimes they detained us and kept us without food.'' 

 Boyerd Solar, UNHCR representative in Cox's Bazar, said his
 organisation had proposed that Bangladesh allow the 21,500
 Rohingyas who entered the country in 1992 to stay. 

 ``The proposal was made in view of lengthy delay and uncertainty
 we are facing in sending these people back to their homes,'' he said. 

 He said the UNHCR had also proposed that the World Food
 Program and U.N. Development Program help with the rehabilitation
 of the Rohingyas in Bangladesh. 

 ``But Bangladesh has rejected the proposals,'' he added. 

 Zafrul Islam Azizi, an official with the government's Relief and
 Rehabilitation Commission in Cox's Bazar, said the refugees have
 grown reluctant to go back to Burma after hearing about the
 UNHCR proposals. 

 ``They started resisting...and we cannot force them to leave because
 under the 1992 repatriation treaty (it) has to be voluntary,'' Azizi
 said. ^REUTER@