Why Rohingya refugees choose Indonesia as a safe haven

Dhaka Tribune
Deutsche Welle
Publish : 02 Dec 2023

Rohingya Muslims walk through waters after they are temporarily allowed by locals to land in Ulee Madon beach, in Indonesia on November 16, 2023. Photo: Reuters

An increasing number of Rohingya refugees are leaving the crowded camps of Cox’s Bazar, making the 1,800-kilometer sea crossing south to Indonesia in rickety boats.

Indonesian police and fishermen said last week they have begun patrolling parts of Aceh province, on the northwestern tip of Sumatra, to prevent the landing of refugee boats. Over 1,000 Rohingya have arrived last month, the largest number since 2015.

Refugees escape Cox's Bazar

DW
December 3'2023

However, life has remained difficult for the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, as they lack food, security, education, and work opportunities in the crowded camps.

A report by Human Rights Watch published this year said criminal gangs and affiliates of Islamist armed groups were causing fear at night in the refugee camps in Cox's Bazar.

A 19-year-old Rohingya refugee who recently arrived in Aceh province with her family told the AFP news agency that criminals in Cox's Bazar threatened her and her family every day, and she paid over $1,800 (€1,640) for the boat journey to Indonesia.

Gang violence in Rohingya refugee camp drives families out

The World
Stephen Snyder
Dec. 1, 2023 · 

Escalating brutality in the refugee camps in and around Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, is driving some Rohingya families to flee. Host Carol Hills speaks with Nay San Lwin, co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition, about conditions in the refugee camps and the growing frustration among the million Rohingya there who remain stateless, unable to return to their native Myanmar nor find a permanent home.
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Bangladesh: Why are Rohingya refugees fleeing to Indonesia?

DW
Arafatul Islam
November 29, 2023

More than 1,000 Rohingya Muslims have arrived in Indonesia by boat this month. They have been fleeing Bangladesh's overcrowded refugee camps where conditions have worsened. 

An increasing number of Rohingya refugees are leaving the crowded camps of Cox's Bazar on the southeastern coast of Bangladesh and are making the 1,800-kilometer (1,120-mile) sea crossing south to Indonesia in rickety boats.

‘Moral duty to stand up’: Rohingya activists join in solidarity with Palestinians

ARAB NEWS
SHEHAB SUMON
November 08, 2023

Collage of photos of Rohingya from Bangladesh to Ireland showing solidarity this week with Palestinians amid Israel’s deadly military campaign in Gaza. (Korim Ullah)

• In 2017, over 700,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh following brutal Myanmar military crackdown
• Suffering of Palestinians ‘surpasses the injustice we have faced,’ Rohingya activist says

DHAKA: Rohingya activists are expressing solidarity with Palestine as they drew parallels on Wednesday between their plight in Myanmar and Israel’s deadly onslaught in Gaza, which has killed over 10,000 Palestinian civilians in a month.

Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh: Myanmar military pursues repatriation project

Aljzeera
May 31, 2023

Delegates from Myanmar's government have visited Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh as part of a repatriation scheme. It's the second such visit in the past three months. Both countries want to send more than 1,000 Rohingya to Myanmar. Some refugees say they've been pressured into signing repatriation documents. About a million fled Myanmar in 2017 after a military crackdown. Al Jazeera's Tanvir Chowdhury spoke to Rohingya refugees in Cox's Bazar, where few trust the repatriation plan. And live to talk with us is Nay San Lwin, a Burmese human rights activist and co-founder of the Free Rohingya coalition.

Link : Here

The Irrawaddy
22 May 2023

A victim’s funeral near Basara refugee camp in Sittwe, Rakhine State, on May 16. / AFP

 

Those killed by Cyclone Mocha refused offers of evacuation, Myanmar’s junta boss Min Aung Hlaing has told a ceremony to accept donations for recovery operations.

Min Aung Hlaing accepted donations on Saturday, saying there had been slight property damage and few casualties because his regime had made proper preparations. He has so far refused to allow international humanitarian organizations to provide relief.

Mocha hit western Myanmar on May 14, killing hundreds of Rohingya, and causing massive property damage. Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine State, was hit hardest by the storm.

‘Feeling like prisoners’: The plight of Rohingya refugees today

Aljazeera
By Joseph Stepansky
Published On 25 Aug 2022

Five years ago, a violent campaign by security forces in Myanmar sparked a mass exodus of about 730,000 Rohingya, who – carrying their belongings on their backs and sometimes crowding onto makeshift bamboo and jerry-can rafts – fled in search of safety. Most headed to neighbouring Bangladesh.

When the Myanmar Regime is Defeated, the Future of the Rohingya Will Become Clear

The Irrawaddy
26 December 2022

Rohingya Muslim refugee children gather around a water pump at the Thankhali refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh on November 25, 2017. / AFP

U Nay San Lwin is the co-founder of the Germany-based Free Rohingya Coalition, but better known on social media as Ro Nay San Lwin. Known for his Rohingya activism, he has described the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) as criminals who kill their own kind. U Nay San Lwin talked recently to The Irrawaddy about the Spring Revolution against the military dictatorship and the conflict in Rakhine State.

UN denied access to Rohingya refugee camps after Cyclone Mocha

The Guardian
Aung Naing Soe and Kaamil Ahmed
Fri 19 May 2023

UNHCR says Myanmar government has refused to allow it to distribute health supplies in Sittwe, where an estimated 90% of Rohingya homes have been destroyed

A Rohingya woman sits by what remains of her home at Basara refugee camp in Sittwe after Cyclone Mocha hit the region. Photograph: Sai Aung Main/AFP/Getty Images

UN staff say they have been denied access to help thousands of Rohingya living in displacement camps in Myanmar who are in urgent need of food, medicine and shelter in the aftermath of Cyclone Mocha, which struck the west of the country on Sunday.

Myanmar junta sets its sights on Rohingya ahead of UN court deadline

Frontier
Myanmar
April 7, 2023

A Rohingya family arrives for a meeting with Myanmar officials in Teknaf in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar District on March 15 as part of supposed repatriation efforts. (AFP)

Ahead of this month’s deadline to submit arguments and evidence to the International Court of Justice, the military regime has been using questionable methods to collect testimony from Rohingya, at times even allegedly pressuring them to change their story.

 

Ko Win Maung’s* village in Rathedaung Township, once home to a large Rohingya population, was one of the first to be attacked in 2017 during the military’s crackdown in northern Rakhine State. It was shortly after lunchtime on August 25 when soldiers arrived in Zaydipyin and began torching houses, forcing Win Maung and more than 650 other Rohingya to flee.

Rohingya campaigners condemn Myanmar’s ‘opaque’ repatriation plan

Aljazeera
By Al Jazeera Staff
Published On 23 Mar 2023
23 Mar 2023

Rights campaigners call the ruling military’s pilot project to repatriate the persecuted ethnic Muslim minority a ‘PR campaign’.

Nearly 800,000 Rohingya fled their homeland in Myanmar in 2017 after a brutal military crackdown [File: Showkat Shafi/Al Jazeera]

 

The Myanmar military’s “pilot project” to repatriate about 1,000 Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh has been met with scepticism, with rights campaigners calling it a “PR campaign”.

Rohingya campaigners condemn Myanmar’s ‘opaque’ repatriation plan

Aljazeera
By Al Jazeera Staff
Published On 23 Mar 202323 Mar 2023

Rights campaigners call the ruling military’s pilot project to repatriate the persecuted ethnic Muslim minority a ‘PR campaign’. 

Nearly 800,000 Rohingya fled their homeland in Myanmar in 2017 after a brutal military crackdown [File: Showkat Shafi/Al Jazeera]

 

The Myanmar military’s “pilot project” to repatriate about 1,000 Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh has been met with scepticism, with rights campaigners calling it a “PR campaign”.

Last week, a delegation from Myanmar visited the world’s largest refugee camp in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district – home to more than 1 million Rohingya – to interview potential candidates for their return as early as next month.

ပင်လယ်ထဲ ရိုဟင်ဂျာစက်လှေနှစ်စီးထက်မနည်း မျောနေဆဲ

RFA
ဇင်မာဝင်း (ဝါရှင်တန်ဒီစီ)
2022.12.28

၂ဝ၂၂ ခုနှစ် နိုဝင်ဘာလ ၁၆ ရက်နေ့က အင်ဒိုနီးရှားနိုင်ငံ အာချေးပြည်နယ်ကို ရောက်ရှိလာကြသော ရိုဟင်ဂျာဒုက္ခသည်များ။AFP

ဒီနှစ်အတွင်း ဘင်္ဂလားဒေ့ရှ်ဒုက္ခသည်စခန်းတွေကနေ အန္တရာယ်များပြီး အသက်ဆုံးရှုံးနိုင်ခြေများတဲ့ပင်လယ်ပြင် ခရီးကို ထွက်လာကြတဲ့ ရိုဟင်ဂျာ ၂၄ဝဝ လောက်ရှိတယ်လို့ ကုလသမဂ္ဂဒုက္ခသည်များဆိုင်ရာ မဟာမင်းကြီးရုံး UNHCR က ခန့်မှန်းထားပြီး ဒါဟာ ပြီးခဲ့တဲ့နှစ်နဲ့နှိုင်းယှဉ်ရင် ငါးဆ ပိုများလာတယ်လို့ လူ့အခွင့်အရေးအဖွဲ့တွေက ပြောကြပါတယ်။

154 Rohingya drifting in Andaman Sea rescued, handed to Myanmar authorities

AA

SM Najmus Saki
DHAKA, Bangladesh
10.12.2022

Rohingya rights group worries about fate of rescued Rohingya in hands of Myanmar junta

A group of Rohingya, who had been drifting in a boat on the Andaman Sea along the Thailand coast, were rescued by a Vietnamese oil service vessel and handed to the Myanmar military government.

The boat was floating in Thai territory.

The Thai Navy went to examine the boat but did not help its occupants with food for people who had been starving for days.

Relatives of the victims received a message that they were rescued by the Vietnamese, according to a Rohingya rights group.

13 dead Rohingya found by side of road in Yangon Region’s Hlegu Township

mizzima
07 December 2022

Residents from Ngwenanthar Village in Yangon Region’s Hlegu Township, about 25km north of Yangon City centre, discovered the bodies of 13 Rohingya men by the side of the Tabinshwehti Road at about 7:00 a.m. on 5 December.

The Ngwenanthar Village administrator reported the find to the authorities and locally based police officers went to inspect the scene and investigate.

Over 400 Rohingya detained in Ayeyarwady Region’s Pathein Prison

mizzima
07 December 2022

More than 400 Rohingya have been detained in Pathein Prison, in Ayeyarwady Region since the February 2021 military coup, according to sources in the legal professions.

The arrested Rohingya came from Rakhine State's Kyauktaw, Buthidaung, Sittwe, Rathaedaung and Maungdaw townships. They were apprehended trying to use waterways to illegally enter Ayeyarwady Region, which borders Rakhine State.

According to sources from the legal professions after the Rohingya were captured the junta filed charges against them under the Registration Act and sentenced them to prison terms ranging from two to five years.

Thirteen Rohingya Bodies Found Dumped Outside Yangon

The Irrawaddy

6 December 2022

Rohingya inside Kutupalong refugee camp in Ukhia, Bangladesh in March, 2022. / AFP

The bodies of 13 Rohingya men were reportedly found dumped by a roadside in Hlegu Township, Yangon, on Monday morning.

Their wet bodies were left near a road linking Highway 7 and Ngwe Nanthar village and taken to Yangon General Hospital for a post-mortem, said the regime.

Rohingya rights activist U Nay San Lwin wrote on social media that the bodies showed signs of beating. The Irrawaddy could not independently verify his comments.

Rohingya Muslims stuck between Myanmar’s military junta, rebel Arakan Army

AA
Halil Ibrahim Medet
ISTANBUL
28.11.2022

Effect of military coup in country led to even more pressure on Rohingya after decades of oppression, says Arakanese activist

File Photo - A Rohingya Muslim man, fled from oppression within ongoing military operations in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, recites Adhan (call to prayer) as they take shelter at a makeshift camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh on September 24, 2017

After suffering decades of oppression, Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar are now caught between two fires from the country’s repressive military junta and the rebel Buddhist Arakan Army, according to local Arakanese activists.

The UN and other international human rights organizations have called the violence against the country’s Rohingya “ethnic cleansing” or “genocide,” saying the Muslim group is “the most persecuted minority in the world.”

 

Rohingya rights groups form alliance for self-determination, dignified survival in Myanmar

AA
Md. Kamruzzaman
DHAKA, Bangladesh
24.11.2022

Several leading groups, prominent activists came together to form Arakan Rohingya National Alliance, which its co-founder views as an urgent need

For the first time since the genocide against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar’s Rakhine State in Aug. 2017, several leading organizations and prominent activists have formed a greater alliance titled “Arakan Rohingya National Alliance (ARNA)” with the aim at ensuring the persecuted community's safe and dignified survival in their homeland.

Nay San Lwin, a founding member of ARNA and co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition, told Anadolu Agency on Thursday that a unified representation of the Rohingya was necessary at relevant international forums, Bangladesh, and Myanmar.

Among the diaspora and refugee communities, Rohingya has dozens of organizations, but none of them is the only representative, Lwin said, adding that a stronger collaboration among Rohingya organizations was required to represent the entire community.