‘Waiting for us to die’: Indonesia’s Rohingya refugees left in legal limbo for years

South China Morning Post

Eko Rusdianto  and Aisyah Llewellyn
Medan,Makassar
19 Jun, 2021

• Makassar, in Indonesia’s South Sulawesi province, is home to thousands of refugees and asylum seekers – but legally, all are just ‘transiting’
• Dwindling resettlement quotas in third countries mean some have been waiting to leave for a decade or more, as they battle with illness and depression

Reyas Alam visit the grave of Haji Mohd Shiraj, a Rohingya refugee who died in Makassar while waiting to be resettled. Photo: Eko Rusdianto

The number of people fleeing wars, violence, persecution and human rights violations rose for the ninth year in 2020 despite the pandemic, according to the United Nations’ refugee agency. About 20.7 million people are considered refugees under the UNHCR’s mandate. On World Refugee Day, This Week in Asia looks at the plight of Rohingya communities seeking temporary refuge in Indonesia and India.

The Rohingya: refugees forever?

Asia Media Centre

Robert Bociaga

16 JUNE 2021

The Rohingya people have long suffered persecution. They risked their lives to escape to Bangladesh and other countries by sea or on foot following the Myanmar military offensive of August 2017. The massacres in Rakhine State were labelled by the United Nations a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing". Back then, the world's attention was fixed on this little-known strip of land in southern Bangladesh near the town of Cox's Bazar. So what has changed for Rohingyas since the military coup in Myanmar, and has the world moved on to other issues? Robert Bociaga reports

Why we should be kinder to Rohingya refugees — Liew Chin Tong

malay mail
Monday, 14 Jun 2021

JUNE 14 — I read with distress and alarm the heightened publicity attacks against the Rohingya and other migrants by Home Minister Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainuddin and Immigration Director-General Datuk Khairul Dzaimee Daud.

Distress because the Rohingya as a group have been subjected to persecution and suffered genocide at the hands of the Myanmar military, and alarm because of the vitriol against a defenceless people.

In August 2017, more than 742,000 Rohingya fled Bangladesh seeking refuge from the Myanmarese regime’s pogrom. Many perished along the way. The refugees who made it to Bangladesh have been sheltered mainly in the camps in Cox’s Bazar and Teknaf. With this massive influx of refugees adding to an older generation of Rohingya who had fled Myanmar into Bangladesh decades earlier, the numbers soon mushroomed to more than a million Rohingya refugees, squeezed into a crowded and underdeveloped border region of Bangladesh.

Dozens of Rohingya refugees land off Aceh coast

THE JAKARTA POST

AFP
Pulau Idaman, Aceh 

 Fri, June 4, 2021

A group of Rohingya refugees gather on a beach after arriving at Pulau Idaman, a small island off the coast of East Aceh in northern Sumatra on June 4, 2021. (AFP/Cekmad)

A boat filled with dozens of Rohingya, mostly women and children, landed on an island off Aceh coast early Friday, according to an AFP reporter and the UN refugee agency.

It is the latest wave of arrivals by the persecuted minority in Muslim-majority Indonesia, after often perilous, months-long sea journeys from cramped refugee camps in Bangladesh -- next to their native Myanmar.

The Rohingya refugees trapped on a remote island miles from land

B B C

BBC World Service

Moazzem Hossain and Swaminathan Natarajan

When Dilara set off from the Bangladeshi coast, she dreamed of a new life in Malaysia.

But she and hundreds of others who had crammed into the boat ended up being rescued, having spent days floating at sea, after being turned away at the border.

Yet they were not returned to the mainland and the families they had left behind.

Instead, their rescuers left the group on an island created out of silt in the middle of the Bay of Bengal, with no hope of escape.

Islamic Zakat donations reached millions of refugees in 2020

TRT WORLD
02 April 2021

Compared to four years ago, Zakat funds increased in record numbers last year, helping more than two million refugees across the world, according to UNHCR.

The latest Islamic Philanthropy report of the UNHCR has shown that Islamic Zakat donations in 2020 saw a big increase compared to previous years, amounting to $61.5 million, reaching more than two million displaced people across the world.

Compared to the period of 2016-2018, when Islamic donations had reached more than 34,000 people, last year, both Zakat and Sadaqah, along with Sadaqah Jariyah, which are other forms of religious donations, helped nearly 2.1 million people in total.

Thailand braces for refugees as thousands flee Myanmar airstrikes

THE HILL

JUSTINE COLEMAN - 

03/29/21

Thailand is bracing itself for thousands of refugees who are fleeing Myanmar after its military launched several airstrikes near its border in recent days, further escalating the military crackdown after the coup.

Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha said on Monday that his government is getting ready for a potential flood of refugees amid the recent strike attacks, The Associated Press reported.

“We don’t want to have mass migration into our territory, but we will consider human rights, too,” Prayut said.

A Refugees Journey from Myanmar Leaving My Homeland

A Refugees Journey from Mya... by Malik Farhan Azam

South Korean envoy visits Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar

Prothomalo
Diplomatic Correspondent

Dhaka
19 Feb 2021,

South Korean envoy visits Rohingya camps in Cox’s BazarCourtesy

South Korean ambassador in Dhaka Lee Jang-keun visited the Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar. He met representatives of the UN agencies, international donor organisations and the local administration in Cox’s Bazar and discussed how to step up collaboration to resolve the Rohingya crisis.

Lee Jang-keun told Prothom Alo on Thursday, “This is the first time I visited Cox’s Bazar to see the Rohingya crisis since I came to Dhaka in July last year. I got an overall idea on the crisis through this visit.”

Rohingya refugees on an island of no return

ASIA TIMES

by Bertil Lintner
December 21, 2020 

Bangladesh is moving Rohingya refugees to an isolated island amid fears militant Islamic groups are penetrating border camps

Rohingya refugees perform prayers as they attend a ceremony organized to remember the first anniversary of a military crackdown that prompted a massive exodus of people from Myanmar to Bangladesh, at the Kutupalong refugee camp in Ukhia on August 25, 2018. Photo: AFP / Dibyangshu Sarkar

CHIANG MAI – They were told that they would be the first to be repatriated to Myanmar.

But when the first lot of 1,642 Rohingya Muslim refugees arrived on Bangladesh’s Bhasan Char island on December 3, they were herded into a huge, newly built settlement consisting of concrete living quarters, two hospitals, clinics, mosques, teaching centers, cyclone shelters, playgrounds and a police station.

Located 34 kilometers from the mainland, or a three-hour journey by boat, the island and what has been constructed there show that the Bangladeshi authorities are accepting the fact that they are stuck with a permanent refugee population. None of the estimated one million Rohingyas in Bangladesh are going back to Myanmar in the foreseeable future, if at all.

‘R’ is for Rohingya: Sesame Street Creates New Muppets for Refugees

The New York Times 

By Hannah Beech
Dec. 19, 2020

A child in a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh and Grover the Muppet in 2018.Credit...Ryan Donnell/Sesame Workshop

BANGKOK — Six-year-old twins Noor and Aziz live in the largest refugee camp in the world. They are Rohingya Muslims who escaped ethnic cleansing in their native Myanmar for refuge in neighboring Bangladesh. They are also Muppets.

On Thursday, Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit that runs the early education TV show “Sesame Street” and operates in more than 150 countries, unveiled Aziz and Noor as the latest Muppets in their cast of characters.

Move of Rohingya Refugees Poses Environmental and Human Rights Concerns

EcoWatch

Tina Gerhardt
Dec. 18, 2020

Rohingya refugees board a Bangladesh Navy ship to be transported to the island of Bhashan Char in Chittagong on December 4, 2020. AFP / Getty Images

On December 4, about 1,600 Rohingya traveled across the Bay of Bengal in seven navy boats from Chattogram to Bhasan Char. Bangladesh plans to move 100,000 families to the island.

The move poses serious concerns, both with regard to the environment and human rights.

Located about 18.6 miles (30 km) from the mainland, Bhasan Char is low-lying and prone to flooding. Therefore, it has been uninhabited. The island only formed in the past 20 years as a result of silt buildup. Bhasan Char rests at the confluence of three large rivers, the Brahmaputra, the Ganges and the Meghna River, which collectively bring rich deposits of silt to the bay.

Rohingya refugees are being displaced, again

Aljazeera

18 Dec 2020

Rohingya are seen inside a tent as they wait to get on board a ship as they move to Bhasan Char island in Chattogram, Bangladesh, December 4, 2020 [File: Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters]

Bangladesh has relocated more than 1,700 Rohingya refugees from crowded camps in the country’s southeast to Bhasan Char, an island prone to flooding, and it intends to relocate thousands more.

From Crowded Camps to a Remote Island: Rohingya Refugees Move Again

TheNew York Times

By Hannah Beech
Published Dec. 4, 2020

 

More than a million Rohingya Muslims have fled atrocities in Myanmar for tent cities in Bangladesh. Some are now being taken to a low-slung landmass in the Bay of Bengal.

 

Rohingya refugees en route to the Bangladeshi island of Bhasan Char on Friday. The Bangladeshi government hopes to move up to 100,000 Rohingya to the island from overcrowded camps.Credit...Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters 

 

The clump of silt in the Bay of Bengal could be inundated by a single strike from a cyclone. Before this year, no one lived there.

But on Friday afternoon, seven Bangladeshi naval boats carrying more than 1,640 Rohingya Muslims landed on the low-slung island of Bhasan Char, as part of the Bangladeshi government’s plan to ease crowding in refugee camps where more than a million Rohingya have lived since fleeing systemic persecution and violence in Myanmar.

Rights groups have decried the resettlement, saying that the Rohingya, yet again, were being forced to move against their will.

“The relocation of so many Rohingya refugees to a remote island, which is still off limits to everyone including rights groups and journalists without prior permission, poses grave concerns about independent human rights monitoring,” Saad Hammadi, a South Asia campaigner for Amnesty International, said on Twitter.

14 illegal Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh held, thanks to plaint on toll-free number

THE NEW INDIAN EXPRESS

By Prasanta Mazumdar
Express News Service

During interrogation, it was found that all of them had fled a “refugee camp” in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar and entered India illegally.

For representational purposes

GUWAHATI: A complaint lodged by a train passenger with a toll-free number led railway officials to 14 suspected Rohingya refugees.

The persons, arrested from a train at New Jalpaiguri station of the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR), had apparently fled a refugee camp in Bangladesh. They had boarded the train in Assam’s Badarpur.

UN chief hopes Myanmar elections to help return of persecuted Rohingya Muslims refugees

Associated Press of Pakistan
Sat, 7 Nov 2020

General Assembly Seventy-third session Informal Briefing by the Secretary-General on his Priorities for 2019

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 07 (APP): UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has expressed hope that the November 8 general elections in Myanmar would open the door for the return of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslim refugees “in safety and dignity.”

In a statement issued here on Friday, he also hoped that the elections would help “advance inclusive sustainable development, humanitarian action, human rights and democratic reforms.”

Real Life Heroes: building a safe space for Rohingya women refugees

UN News

18 August 2020

Migrants and Refugees

 OCHA/Vincent Tremeau
Hakimpara refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh.

Bangladeshi architect Rizvi Hassan is the driving force behind the construction of a safe space for Rohingya women and girls, in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, site of the world’s largest camp for displaced people, and home to around a million Rohingya refugees who fled from Myanmar. The community centre caters to a marginalized, vulnerable group, at risk of gender-based violence. 

The centre, designed and built by Rohingyas, provides counselling and training to the women and girls, as part of a project by Bangladeshi NGO BRAC and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Mr. Hassan shares his story as part of the #RealLifeHeroes campaign, by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), ahead of this year’s World Humanitarian Day, on 19 August.

USC doctor finds evidence of human rights abuses, alleged war crimes against Rohingya refugees

USC News
BY Eric Lindberg
October 17, 2019

Through interviews with Rohingya refugees who fled Myanmar, USC emergency physician Parveen Parmar and others document brutal attacks against the Muslim minority group.

The attacks usually start at night, foreshadowed by barking dogs and the chatter of machine guns in the distance.

Rohingya Refugee Response - Bangladesh: Protection Partner Presence (as of 30 September 2019)

Rohingya refugees: ‘We are hostages’

GULF NEWS
 ASIA
August 27, 2019
Reuters

Two years on, Rohingya still in Myanmar trapped by new war

Rohingya refugees gather to mark the second anniversary of the exodus at the Kutupalong camp in    Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh on August 25. Image Credit: REUTERS

Yangon: When Myanmar officials toured refugee camps in Bangladesh last month, inviting Rohingya Muslims who fled the country to return, they brought with them pamphlets adorned with cartoons showing hijab-wearing women passing through checkpoints and happily grasping identity cards.

They did not mention the new war being waged at home.