Rohingya Refugees

THE MOST PERSECUTED PEOPLE IN THE WORLD

In the last few years we got used to hear and read about the immigration “crisis” in Europe. The media tell us everyday that everyone wants to come to Europe. It would sound a bit weird to hear about an immigration crisis in South-East Asia. But that is what actually happened to hear form the media in mid 2015.

Perhaps one can think “why?”, but first what is important is “who?”. Who are those people and where do they come from?

The large majority of them are Rohingya people and they come from Myanmar and Bangladesh and, for the UN, they are the most persecuted population in the world.

Who are the Rohingyas and why do they emigrate?

Rohingya are the Muslim minority that comes from Rakhine, a region on the west of Myanmar, which borders Bangladesh.

In Myanmar they are a non recognised minority, from the 1982 they are deprived of their citizenship and they are victims of serious human rights violations from the population of Myanmar which act with the tacit consent of the government and the opposition.

For this reasons they are forced to leave their own country and their own lands, to escape from the persecution of their neighbours.

Some facts about the Rohingyas' immigration phenomenon

It is estimated that Rohingyas are about 800 thousands. I guess that the uncertainty of the numbers is due to the fact that, as stateless people, Rohingyas almost do not exist.

The majority of them lives close to the border between Myanmar and Bangladesh, settled in refugee camps where the life conditions are not acceptable at all. On the Myanmar side they are persecuted by the population, in Bangladesh they are abused by the military.

In order to escape form their certain destiny in those camps, many Rohingyas entrust them self to the human traffickers. Most of them are directed to Malaysia and Indonesia, both Muslim countries, and in some cases Philippines and Australia.

Once in the hands of the traffickers the people travel to Thailand and are settled in other camps where the traffickers wait for the payment of a ransom. Once the payment is received the people are put into ships to start the trip in the Andaman Sea, to reach the costs of the “salvation”. The trip often take months.

Finally we got to the scoop! At this point the ships are supposed to dock on whatever cost. But actually, the most obvious thing become the most complicated. Since May 2015, I herd and read of ships overflowing of immigrants that where intercepted by the navy of one or the other country of destination, and then left in the open sea with the instructions on how to reach the next country. In June, once a ship full of migrants approached the Australian costs, Canberra paid 5000$ to each trafficker on the boat, to go back to Indonesia. Canberra never denied it.

The result was that thousands of migrants were left in the open sea waiting to die. Meanwhile, the international community tried to stimulate a reaction from the involved countries. But the final result was that the traffickers started to feel in danger and they began abandoning more boats with migrants in the Andaman Sea. In the same period the governments of Thailand and Malaysia started to find graves full of migrants bodies on their territory.

Even though the migrants come from different places, the majority of them are the Rohingyas from Myanmar.

After researching those terrible events, and finding out about the inhuman treatments that Rohingyas are subject of, the time for the first question has come: why? why Rohingyas? what have they done to deserve it?

Why Rohingyas?

Four years ago, when we spoke about Myanmar we knew we were speaking about military dictatorship.

From 2011 the military in Myanmar opened to the democratic reforms and since then many things changed there. One thing that did not change was the discrimination against Rohingyas. In 1982 during the dictatorship of general Ne Win, Rohingyas were deprived of their citizenship and they lost all their rights. This seems to be one of the things that will not change in the sudden future.

This behaviour alimented the hate of the Buddhists against Muslims. This turned in a paradoxical movement of fascist monks, leaded by U Wirsthu. This monk comes form the city of Mandalay where he created the movement 969, that spread out around the country.

If you want to learn more about it I suggest to read the article of Time, written by Hanna Beech, titled ‘The Face of Buddhist Terror’.

The information provided in this article where taken from different articles found on the magazine Internazionale. The issues of the magazine where I took the informations are: 1107, 1105, 1104, 1103, 1102, 1082, 1025, 1020, 1018, 1015, 1014, 1006, 1002, 998, 995, 993, 975, 973.