Rohingya refugees need access to healthcare: MSF

With unrest in Burma’s Rakhine State, many Muslims and Buddhist are now unable to receive adequate health care, says Médecins Sans Frontières, which has been forced to suspend its operations in the area.

When sectarian violence erupted on June 9, it put its local clinic staff in danger, MSF said in a statement on Monday.

“MSF is extremely worried that victims of the clashes are not receiving emergency care, and about the ongoing healthcare needs of our patients,” said Joe Belliveau, MSF operations manager. “Our immediate concerns are to provide emergency medical services, get food and supplies to people, and get our HIV patients their lifesaving treatment.”

In their effort to find a safe haven from the threat of continued violence, people are trying to flee to southern Bangladesh. MSF said it is concerned by reports that the Bangladesh government has denied access to people attempting to flee the violence and seek healthcare across the border. MSF also provides medical services in Bangladesh, and is ready to treat anyone in need of assistance, regardless of their origins, it said.

“People seeking refuge and in need of food, water and medical care should be allowed to cross the border,” said Belliveau. “In both Myanmar and Bangladesh, MSF is trying to reach those affected by the violence, but they should also be allowed to reach us.”

In Rakhine (Arakan) State, MSF has provided medical services for 20 years focusing on maternal health and infectious diseases such as malaria, diarrhea, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. In 2011, MSF conducted more than 487,000 consultations, and had over 600 patients on anti-retroviral treatment for HIV/AIDS. In addition to meeting immediate emergency needs, the return to a safe environment is needed to get MSF programmes back on track for longer-term health and well-being of people from all communities throughout the state, said the non-profit health service.

It said the MSF medical programme in Burma is one of its largest in the world. MSF is the country's main AIDS treatment provider and has been at the forefront of the fight against malaria.

More people became refugees last year than in any year since 2000, UN reports

OTTAWA - A new report by the United Nations refugee agency says more people became refugees last year than in any year since 2000.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees' report says 4.3 million people were newly displaced in 2011, with 800,000 fleeing their countries and becoming refugees.
A Bangladeshi security officer gives water to Rohingya Muslims, fleeing from ethnic violence in Myanmar between Buddhists and minority Rohingya Muslims, on a boat jetty at Shahporir Dwip in Taknaf, Bangladesh, Monday, June 18, 2012. A border guard official says they have detained 128 Rohingya refugees seeking shelter from sectarian violence in western Myanmar. Bangladesh has refused to allow the refugees in despite call by the United Nations. (AP Photo/Saurabh Das)
In total, 42.5 million people ended 2011 as refugees, internally displaced or in the process of seeking asylum.

The UNHCR report attributes the high numbers last year to a string of humanitarian crises brought on by drought and conflict in the Middle East and Africa.

"2011 saw suffering on an epic scale. For so many lives to have been thrown into turmoil over so short a space of time means enormous personal cost for all who were affected,” said Antonio Guterres, the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees, in a statement.

“We can be grateful only that the international system for protecting such people held firm for the most part and that borders stayed open. These are testing times.”

Canada ranked ninth on a list of main destination countries for new asylum seekers, and together with the United States, admitted four-fifths of all the refugees resettled by the UN in 2011.

The UNHCR representative in Canada says the country is highly regarded for its work on helping people displaced around the world find a new home.

"Canada is a country that is very important to us with respect to the solutions of refugee problems," said Furio De Angelis.

But De Angelis says there are concerns about the Conservative government's recent changes to refugee laws.

Among other things, the UNHCR had originally sounded the alarm over provisions in Bill 31, also known as the Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act, which would have allowed for the detention, without review for one year, of people designated as being part of "mass arrivals" in Canada.

That provision was later amended by the government to require detention review at the 14-day mark and then again six months later.

But De Angelis said those and other changes made to the proposed law haven't alleviated all of the UNHCR's concerns.

He is expected to testify before a Senate committee Monday to address them.

Also, at the end of this month, most refugees will be losing access to extended health care benefits.

Currently, the federal government provides basic health care, dental and vision care and medication to all refugee claimants until they become eligible for provincial coverage.

The changes to the interim health care program sharply curtail the benefits, a move the government says will save more than $100 million over the next five years and ensure refugee claimants don't get better access to health care than Canadians.

Canadian doctors and other health care providers say the cuts are unjust and are planning a protest on Monday.

De Angelis said the UNHCR is concerned about the way the shaky global economy is affecting refugee protection.

"We know that there will be a challenge in resources with respect to meeting humanitarian needs and we have indications from donor countries that that will be the case for obviously reason, given the financial and economic downturn in so many traditional donor countries," he said.

The other concern facing the UNHCR is the fact there is no end in sight to the conflicts plaguing the top refugee producing countries, like Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan.

"We really don't see the seeds of a durable political solution to such old conflicts," De Angelis said.

On average last year, one out of four refugees in the world were from Afghanistan, with the majority settling in Pakistan and Iran, the report said.

According to figures provided by Citizenship and Immigration, only 419 refugee claims from citizens of Afghanistan were received in Canada last year.

Rohingyas coming in again

BGB men offer lunch, dry food, water before sending them back
Rohingyas eat ravenously under the watchful eyes of BGB members at Shah Porir Dweep jetty of Teknaf yesterday. Though they are not welcome in Bangladesh, border guards offer them a meal before sending them back. Photo: Anurup Kanti DasJulfikar Ali Manik and Dwaipayan Barua, from Teknaf

After three days of almost no intrusion attempts by Rohingyas, around 148 boat people from Myanmar tried to enter Bangladesh from Sunday night till yesterday afternoon.

A small group of seven attempted to flee into Teknaf from June 14 to early Sunday, while yesterday alone eight fishing boats full of 140 headed for Teknaf shores.

All the 140, except for a minor girl who claimed to be Bangladeshi, were male Rohingyas and they left their villages fearing “arrest by Myanmar army”.

Locals and officials, who breathed a sigh of relief thinking that Rohingyas had stopped escaping the neighbouring Myanmarese state of Rakhine to Bangladesh, became worried at this fresh influx bid.

The Rohingyas were sent back to Myanmar by boats with dry food and water. The girl was kept in BGB custody for identity verification.

The intruders came from the villages of Maungdaw, a town of the Western Rakhine state, bordering Teknaf upazila of southern Cox's Bazar district.

It was around 11:00am yesterday when the BGB and coast guard saw from the Shah Porir Dweep coast some five Rohingya boats bobbing in the river.

After the Rohingyas had ignored directives to go back, the forces brought them to the Shah Porir Dweep jetty. Another two groups of boat people, caught by the forces a few hours earlier, were also kept there.

Around 3:00pm, a small boat of seven Rohingyas trying to make an entry through the river was stopped by a coast guard team. This group, too, was taken to the jetty.

The BGB provided meal for all the intruders.

Some locals of Shah Porir Dweep also bought from a local store some dry food and bottles of mineral water for the Rohingyas.

The store owner, Nurul Absar, who also donated some dry food, told The Daily Star that the locals were helping the Rohingyas on humanitarian and religious grounds.

Absar, however, said providing shelter to Rohingyas in Bangladesh was not a good idea. “Myanmar is their [Rohingyas'] country; their government has to solve their problem.”

He said the countries that were concerned about Rohingyas should put pressure on Myanmar to resolve the crisis.

Also, two boats carrying eight Rohingyas were intercepted by guards in Sabrang and Naitong areas in the morning and all of them were pushed in the course of the day.

Local officials who keep themselves updated about the developments in the neighbouring country said there was a “cordon and search operation” at Maungdaw on Saturday and Sunday nights.

The Myanmar army arrested many male villagers from the town and those who were picked up were still traceless.

Lt Col Zahid Hassan, commanding officer of BGB 42 Battalion at Teknaf, told The Daily Star, “As they [Rohingyas] are aware of the hospitality of Bangladeshis, they prefer to come here instead of looking for safe places within Myanmar.”

Zahid said the BGB had fed the intruders on humanitarian grounds.

But some other officials in the force and local administration say if the other Rohingyas came to know about this hospitality they would prefer to come to Bangladesh.

About yesterday's intrusion attempts, Zahid talked to Myanmar border force Nasaka. “Nasaka claimed they didn't send the Rohingyas to Bangladesh forcefully.”

Things were different in 1991, during the second influx of Rohingyas as refugees, when the Myanmar government itself sent them forcefully.

Yesterday, one of the Rohingyas, identifying himself as Mir Ahmad, 25, claimed that on Sunday he along with his younger brother and two nephews fled his village at Bakghona of Maungdaw after Maghrib prayers fearing possible arrest.

They started on a boat with 15 others aboard from a nearby coast in the dark and escaped Nasaka vigilance, but were intercepted by the BGB.

He said Rohingya males of the village were being taken by some unknown people to unknown places in the last few days and none of them had returned home. Asked, Ahmad could not give any details.

Ahmad Shah, another intruder, said he had fled his village at Padongcha two days back and remained in hiding in a forest.

He got on a boat yesterday morning and tried to enter Teknaf but failed.

When the Rohingyas tried to come to Bangladesh yesterday morning, there were more then a hundred Bangladeshi boats in the Naf River near Shah Pori Dweep for fishing.

They rowed across as if theirs were fishing boats like any other.

Refugees Flee Violence in Rakhine

 Rakhine refugees live in camps and are afraid to return home while Rohingya fleeing by boat are turned back by Bangladesh.
Tensions appear to have cooled in western Burma’s Rakhine state following clashes between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims but tens of thousands displaced by the violence face aid shortages and remain afraid to return home.
Troops patrolled the streets of the state capital Sittwe Friday, where weekly Muslim prayers were cancelled and a dawn-to-dusk curfew remains in place as the sectarian strife left at least 29 people dead since June 8.
Nearly 32,000 people have been displaced and are living in 37 camps that have been set up for both Rakhine and Rohingya across the state, officials said.
North of the capital, people fleeing the fighting are straining resources in Yathetaung township, where 12,000 people, mostly Rakhine Buddhists, are living, a local official said.
Hla Myint, township chairman of the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP), told RFA Friday that aid is being sent to neighboring Buthitaung and Maungdaw townships, but not to the 14 camps in Yathetaung.
"The help hasn't arrived in Yathetaung yet,” adding that there had only been enough aid and supplies for the first 5,000 of the displaced.
"We were able to help them at the beginning, but not anymore. We need things like sheets, bedding, and other items.”
“There is no camp opened by authorities. All refugee camps are opened and run by local people and groups.
We use schools and Buddhist temples for camps, and have sent some 3,000 refugees to private homes. Some refugees are in the villages,” he said.
According to official estimates Thursday, nearly 2,600 homes, some 1,200 of them ethnic Rakhine and some 1,300 Rohingya, had been destroyed in the violence.
The UN refugee agency, which sent monitors to the region this week, said the need for food, shelter, and medical attention for the displaced could be “considerable.”

Rohingya
Some Rohingya fleeing the violence by boat to neighboring Bangladesh, already burdened with about 300,000 Rohingya living in its poor southeast, have been turned back, the agency said.
Urging Bangladesh not to block the boats, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said in a statement Friday it was “deeply concerned” about “dramatic scenes” of boatloads of refugees.
"The UN refugee agency has first-hand, credible accounts of boats from Myanmar not being enabled to access Bangladeshi territory. These reports indicate women, children and some wounded are on board,” the statement said.
“There are now a number of boats drifting in the mouth of the Naf River with desperate people onboard in need of water, food and medical care.”
Decades of discrimination in Burma and elsewhere have left the Rohingya, of which some 800,000 live in Rakhine, stateless and viewed by the United Nations as among the most persecuted minorities in the world.
Aside from Bangladesh, an estimated 30,000 Rohingya live in Malaysia, where several thousand turned out for a protest near the Burmese embassy in the capital Kuala Lumpur Friday, demanding an immediate end to the violence in Rakhine.
Foreign assistance
The Burmese government regards the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh even though many of them have lived in the country for generations.
U.S. and other Western nations were monitoring how the Burmese government was handling assistance to victims in the aftermath of the Rakhine violence, which has drawn worldwide attention to the Rohingya.
Following a meeting with U.S. officials on aid for Rakhine state, RNDP Chairman Aye Maung told RFA that his party thought development assistance from the UN in the state had been unevenly biased towards Muslims and had left out Rakhine people.
“All the money they spent went to only one religious group [Muslims], and Buddhist Rakhine got four to five percent at most of all humanitarian assistance there,” he said, after discussing future plans for assistance with U.S. Embassy’s Charge D’Affaires Michael Thurston Thursday.
“If this kind of differentiation based on race and religion continues as it was in the past, we will lead the protest against the UN program when UN offices open in Rakhine. We also discussed citizenship law and immigration law with him."
“We need to look into [the ethnic strife] deeply and deal with it skillfully,” he said. “We cannot say the problem will be solved merely by shaking hands.”
Thurston also met with leaders of five Muslim groups in Rangoon to discuss the unrest in Rakhine.
“He asked what kind of humanitarian assistance we need and how he can help. We talked about the food needed there. He said he would inform Washington and get the help as soon as possible,” Burma Muslim League secretary Kyaw Khin told RFA.
Aung San Suu Kyi
Meanwhile, Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi arrived Friday in Oslo, where she will pick up her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, following an address to Swiss parliament.
The 66-year-old democracy campaigner is on a tour of Europe, her second trip abroad after having spent most of the past two decades under house arrest.
At a press conference on the first stop of her trip in Geneva, she said that "the most important lesson" from the Rakhine conflict was "the need for rule of law," which she added was also key to resolving the numerous armed ethnic conflicts in the country emerging from decades of harsh military rule.

Violence Throws Spotlight on Rohingya by RFA

As violence rages in Rakhine state, will the Burmese government confront head-on the long-running issue of a stateless Muslim group?

AFP

A Rohingya Muslim family seen in the Burmese-Bangladesh border after fleeing violence in Burma's Rakhine state, June 12, 2012.

The week-long sectarian violence between Buddhists and Muslims in Burma's western Rakhine state has thrown the spotlight on the Rohingya, one of the most oppressed groups in the country, and compels the government to address a burning issue that has been swept under the carpet for decades.

Most of the estimated 800,000-strong Rohingya Muslim minority in Burma live in Rakhine, a predominantly Buddhist state bordering Bangladesh where dozens of people have been killed in clashes triggered by the rape and murder last month of a Buddhist girl, allegedly by three Muslims, and the June 3 lynching of 10 Muslims in apparent retaliation.

In revenge attacks, Rohingya mobs in the state's capital Sittwe burned the homes and businesses of ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, and the army opened fire and allegedly killed Rohingyas, according to Human Rights Watch. Mobs of Rohingyas and Buddhists armed with sticks and swords have also gone on a rampage, burning hundreds of homes and resulting in numerous deaths.

Experts say Rakhine has always been a tinderbox of hatred between the two communities with the potential to explode, laying the blame largely on the Buddhist-majority government for regarding the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and rendering them stateless even though many of them have lived in the country for generations.

"What has happened recently is just more of a symptom of a long history of really horrible discriminatory treatment of the Rohingya," Kelley Currie, a former Asia policy adviser in the U.S. State Department, told RFA.

Burmese authorities, particularly the military junta which ruled the country repressively for half a century until it was replaced by a nominally civilian government in March last year, "have handled this situation badly for decades, have encouraged this mentality among the people that these individuals are stateless, and made little efforts to integrate them or resolve this problem in a sustainable way," she said.

The religious dimension of the Rohingya problem is particularly troubling and one which people seldom talk about, said Currie, now an expert at the Washington-based Project 2049 Institute.

"The military junta over the past 20 years has really emphasized Buddhism as the religion of the 'true' Burmese people, and they have been cited repeatedly for religious persecution by the United States," she said.

Blacklisted

The government's refusal to recognize that the Rohingya are Burmese citizens is among reasons why Burma has been blacklisted by the U.S. State Department as a "country of particular concern" in its annual surveys on international religious freedom.

Aside from being stateless, the Rohingya are subject to a rule, embedded in marriage licenses, that they are only permitted to have two children, rights groups say. They lack access to health care, food, and education and are subject to forced labor and travel restrictions.

They are widely regarded within Burma as “Bengalis”—a term for people of Bangladeshi nationality.

The current government of President Thein Sein, which has been lauded for implementing political and economic reforms over the last year, has come under criticism for continuing the junta's discriminatory policies towards the Rohingya.

“There is no change of attitude of the new civilian government of U [honorific] Thein Sein towards Rohingya people; there is no sign of change in the human rights situation of Rohingya people. Persecution against them is actually greater than before,” said Nurul Islam, president of the London-based Arakan Rohingya National Organization, according to the IRIN humanitarian news agency in a March dispatch.

The Rohingya were given voting rights in Burma's landmark 2010 elections and, according to the report, were promised citizenship if they voted for the military regime’s representatives.

“Citizenship is still not restored,” said Islam. “Killing, rape, harassment, torture, and atrocious crimes by border security forces and armed forces have increased. The humiliating restrictions on their freedom of movement, education, marriage, trade, and business still remain imposed.”

Thein Sein has said that the violence in Rakhine, known as Arakan State in British colonial times, was fueled by dissatisfaction harbored by different religious and ethnic groups and the desire for vengeance, warning that it could scuttle his reform agenda which is key to lifting of international sanctions.

"Damage .. .could be done to the peace, stability, democratic process, and development of our country during its period of transformation, if the unrest spreads," he said.

Negotiations

Thein Sein's reform plans include negotiations with armed ethnic groups fighting for autonomy. Rohingya activists demand recognition as a Burmese ethnic group, claiming a centuries-old link to Rakhine state.

"The plight of Rohingyas should be an integral part of any reconciliation program involving ethnic groups," said T. Kumar, international advocacy director at Amnesty International.

"Ethnic minorities in general and Rohingyas in particular have been shortchanged," he said.

But even some pro-democracy dissidents from Burma's ethnic Burman majority, which makes up nearly 70 percent of the country's population, refuse to acknowledge the Rohingyas as compatriots.

“We have not said anything about this for a long time, but now we have to express our views on the Rohingya,” said Ko Ko Gyi, a prominent leader of the 88 Generation Students, a pro-democracy organization founded by leaders of 1988 anti-government street protests.

“The Rohingya are not a Burmese ethnic group. The root cause of the violence ... comes from across the border and foreign countries,” he said, adding that countries that criticize Burma for its refusal to recognize the Rohingya should respect its sovereignty.

Against the backdrop of the current Rohingya crisis, confronting the ethnic problem will be the "most difficult challenge" for Thein Sein's government, said Suzanne DiMaggio, the vice-president of New York-based Asia Society's Global Policy Programs.

"Unless and until the ethnic problems are resolved, all of the progress made in the reform area could be wiped away," she said. "Ultimately, if the country wants to have a cohesive population, the ethnic issues have to be looked at in a comprehensive way. That is very difficult to do."

Will the violence then force Thein Sein's government to confront the Rohingya issue head on?

"The fact that it has gotten a very strong international reaction, including a strong statement from the United States, I think has pushed this issue up their priority list and they will have to address it; they will have to do something about it," Currie of Project 2049 Institute said.

"But I wouldn't expect them to do anything to resolve this issue in a very sustainable way. I expect them to do whatever they need to do to get this off the front pages and get it out of people's attention and tamp it down for the time being so that people aren't bothering them about it."

Rohingya Muslims Persecuted In Myanmar And Bangladesh

BANGKOK — They have been called ogres and animals, terrorists and much worse – when their existence is even acknowledged.

Asia's more than 1 million ethnic Rohingya Muslims are considered by rights groups to be among the most persecuted people on Earth. Most live in an anachronistic purgatory without passports, unable to travel freely or call any place home.

In Myanmar, shaken this week by a bloody spasm of violence involving Rohingyas in which dozens of civilians died, they are almost universally despised. The military junta whose half-century of rule ended only last year treated them as foreigners – fueling a profound resentment now reflected in waves of vitriol being posted online.

"People feel it very acceptable to say that 'We will work on wiping out all the Rohingyas,'" said Debbie Stothard, an activist with the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma, referring to hyperbolic Internet comments she called "disturbing."

The Myanmar government regards Rohingyas mostly as illegal migrants from Bangladesh, even though many of their families have lived in Myanmar for generations. Bangladesh rejects them just as stridently.

"This is the tragedy of being stateless," said Chris Lewa, who runs a non-governmental organization called the Arakan Project that advocates for the Rohingya cause worldwide.

"In Burma they're told they're illegals who should go back to Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, they're told they're Burmese who should go back home," Lewa said. "Unfortunately, they're just caught in the middle. They have been persecuted for decades, and it's only getting worse."


That was made painfully clear this week as Bangladeshi coast guard units turned back boatload after boatload of terrified Rohingya refugees trying to escape the violence in Myanmar's Rakhine state. The clashes between Rohingyas and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists have taken a roughly equal toll on both communities, though each blames the other for the violence.

The boats were filled with women and children, and Bangladesh defied international calls to accept them, saying the impoverished country's resources are already too strained.

A few have slipped through, including a month-old baby abandoned Wednesday in a boat after its occupants fled border guards. Three other Rohingyas have been treated for gunshot wounds at a hospital in the Bangladeshi town of Chittagong, including one who died.

The unrest, which has seen more than 2,500 homes charred and 30,000 people displaced internally, erupted after a mob lynched 10 Muslims in apparent retaliation for the rape and murder last month of a 27-year-old Buddhist woman, allegedly by Muslims.

On Thursday, Rakhine state was reportedly calm. But Rohingyas living there "very much feel like they're trapped in a box," said Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch. "They're surrounded by enemies, and there is an extremely high level of frustration."

The grudges go back far. Bitterness against the Rohingya in Myanmar has roots in a complex web of issues: the fear that Muslims are encroaching illegally on scarce land in a predominantly Buddhist country; the fact that the Rohingya look different than other Burmese; an effort by the former junta to portray them as foreigners.

Across the border in Bangladesh, civilians – not the government – are more tolerant. But even there, Rohingyas are largely unwanted because their presence in the overpopulated country only adds to competition for scarce resources and jobs.

Myanmar's government has the largest Rohingya population in the world: 800,000, according to the United Nations. Another 250,000 are in Bangladesh, and hundreds of thousands more are scattered around the world, primarily the Middle East.

Human Rights Watch and other independent advocacy groups say Rohingyas face discrimination routinely. In Myanmar, they are subjected to forced labor by the army, a humiliation not usually applied to ethnic Rakhine in the same area, Lewa said.

Rohingyas must get government permission to travel outside their own villages and to marry. Apparently concerned about population growth, authorities have barred Rohingyas from having more than two children.

In 1978, Myanmar's army drove more than 200,000 Rohingyas into Bangladesh, according to rights groups and the U.S. Campaign for Burma. Some 10,000 died in squalid conditions, and the rest returned to Myanmar. The campaign was repeated in 1991-1992, and again a majority returned.

In 2009, five boatloads of haggard Rohingya migrants fleeing Myanmar were intercepted by Thai authorities. Rights groups allege they were detained and beaten, then forced back to sea, emaciated and bloodied, in vessels with no engines and little food or water. Hundreds are believed to have drowned.

The same year, Myanmar's consul general in Hong Kong – now a U.N. ambassador – described the Rohingya as "ugly as ogres" in an open letter to diplomats in which he compared their "dark brown" skin to that of the "fair and soft" ethnic Burmese majority.

The latest unrest has focused fresh attention on the Rohingyas' plight, but it has also galvanized a virulent new strain of resentment. Many Burmese have taken to the Internet to denounce the Rohingya as foreign invaders, with some comparing them to al-Qaida and the Taliban.

While vitriol has come from both sides, what makes the latest unrest unique is that virtually "the entire population is openly and completely against" them, said Sai Latt, a writer and Myanmar analyst studying at Canada's Simon Fraser University.

"We have heard of scholars, journalists, writers, celebrities, even the so-called democracy fighters openly making comments against Rohingyas," Sai Latt said.

One Burmese actress posted "I hate them 100%" on her Facebook wall on Monday as the fires burned. By Thursday, her comment had nearly 250 "likes."

Prominent Burmese language journals have reported "only the Rakhine side," Sai Latt said. And many people have lashed out at foreign media, accusing them of getting the story wrong.

Ko Ko Gyi, a prominent former political prisoner released in January, has said Rohingyas should not be mistreated but added they "are not an ethnic group in Myanmar at all." He blamed the recent violence on illegal migrants from Bangladesh.

The longtime leader of Myanmar's democracy movement, Aung San Suu Kyi, has shied away from the blame game, saying the problem should be tackled by fair application of the law.

Speaking in Geneva on a five-nation European tour, she said that "without rule of law, such communal strife will only continue.

"The present situation will need to be handled with delicacy and sensitivity," she told reporters.

The tide of nationalistic sentiment against the Rohingya puts Suu Kyi in a difficult position. Her conciliatory message risks alienating large blocs of supporters at a time when she and her National League for Democracy are trying to consolidate political gains attained after they entered Parliament for the first time in April.

The Rohingya speak a Bengali dialect similar to one spoken by residents of southern Bangladesh. And physically, they are almost indistinguishable from their Bangladeshi counterparts, said Lewa, of the Arakan Project.

But their history – specifically the amount of time they've lived in Myanmar, and who among them qualifies as a legitimate resident – is bitterly disputed.

Some say the Rohingya are descended from Arab settlers in the 7th century, and that their state was conquered by the Burmese in 1784. Later waves arrived from British-run colonial India in the 1800s, but like the colonists themselves, they were regarded as foreigners.

That view persisted through half a century of military rule. Myanmar's post-junta government does not recognize them as one of the country's 135 indigenous ethnic groups. And many people stridently believe they are not even a real ethnic group – rather, they are only illegal migrants from Bangladesh.

President Thein Sein has warned that any escalation could jeopardize the nation's fragile democratic reforms.

The International Crisis Group said that ironically, the nation's newfound freedoms may have helped contribute to the unrest.

"The loosening of authoritarian constraints may well have enabled this current crisis to take on a virulent intensity," the group said. "It is not uncommon that when an authoritarian state loosens its grip, old angers flare up and spread fast."

___

Associated Press writers Xinyan Yu, Jocelyn Gecker and Grant Peck in Bangkok and Frank Jordans in Geneva contributed to this report.

A litmus test for the new Burma by Zarganar

Men carry homemade weapons during the sectarian violence that has recently erupted in Burma's Rakhine state. Photograph: Reuters


Sunday 17 June 2012
As Aung San Suu Kyi is allowed to go to the UK ethnic violence threatens to undermine my country's transition to democracy


As a comedian, poet, film-maker and loudmouth, I often fell foul of the censors in Burma, where I was a political prisoner four times. Sometimes it was through deliberate provocation, such as my insistence on trying to include kidnap scenes in all of my films, where at some point the good guys would exclaim "we must free that lady!", a thinly veiled act of resistance which caught on in the industry and became obligatory for many film-makers during Aung San Suu Kyi's imprisonment.

My most recent sentence was for 35 years, imposed for criticism of the Burmese government's woeful response to Cyclone Nargis in 2008, and from which I was released last autumn as part of a mass amnesty. Yet I have also been imprisoned simply for using the internet. It might be interesting to learn that communications were policed by people who understood little about the technology they were patrolling. I don't think it takes a comedian to see the funny side of police confiscating my computer screen, but leaving the hard drive. Freedom of expression has been rigorously denied for a long time, but Burma is very definitely changing and, in this new world, new challenges are presenting themselves.

This week, Aung San Suu Kyi will visit Britain for the first time in 24 years. That she is now free to travel (as am I) is a hugely positive development. It reflects the changes taking place in Burma and there is much to be welcomed. Yet she and I are aware of an unwatched pot that is threatening to boil over at home – and may yet undermine the transition to democracy.

Last month sectarian violence erupted in Burma's Rakhine state on the Bangladesh border, where both Buddhist Rakhine (or Arakanese) and Muslim Rohingya minorities live. There is a history of inter-ethnic tension and violence dating back decades. The latest episode took place shortly after my arrival in London. I was sickened to read about the mob killing of 10 Rohingya men in retaliation for the alleged gang rape of a Rakhine teenage girl.

Now we are seeing a cycle of violence and reprisals, with homes and businesses burned to the ground and hundreds taking refuge in public buildings. A state of emergency has been declared in Rakhine state. There are reports of live ammunition being used to disperse crowds and curfews have been imposed.

The situation in the area is complex and dates back at least to our colonial history. There has been institutionalised discrimination against the Rohingya for decades. This is exacerbated by corruption among border enforcement officials, which has allowed illegal immigration and added to sectarian tensions.

The entire situation is a litmus test for reform in our country, including for improvements in freedom of expression. When I read some of the language being used on social media, both inside and outside the country, I am concerned that the Burmese people are using their new freedom to express views which incite racial hatred.

Distributing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights used to get you a jail sentence. Fortunately that is no longer the case. The declaration says all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. So the Burmese government needs to exercise its responsibility to protect the rights of all those in Burma, whatever their religion or ethnicity. We need legal action to be taken against those who have committed murder and violence and damaged property. The government must restore the rule of law and end corruption and immigration abuse, but not while trampling on human rights like before. And we Burmese must use freedom of expression to promote peace, not conflict.

"The most persecuted group in Asia"

THIDAR HTWE’s short life was not much older than Myanmar’s democracy movement. After a quarter-century of struggle the movement has scented victory of a kind, taking seats in parliament just this year. But now the untimely death of Miss Thidar Htwe, a 26-year-old from Thapraychaung village, has ignited a tinderbox of ethnic tensions. Violence is flaring around the western state of Rakhine. The president, Thein Sein, warned in a televised address that it could hinder the nascent reforms. As one of the worst episodes of communal violence the country has seen in decades, it also raises hard questions about the rights of minorities in a new Myanmar.

On May 28th, Miss Thidar Htwe, a Buddhist of the Rakhine ethnic group, was raped and killed, allegedly by three young Rohingya Muslims, as she made her way home from a nearby village. Six days later a mob of 300 Buddhist-Rakhine vigilantes stopped a bus carrying Muslim pilgrims was stopped in the town of Taungkok. The passengers were taken off the vehicle and ten of them were clubbed to death, and one of the women was sexually assaulted. The mob then poured alcohol on the corpses, in desecration. According to some accounts, one of the victims was a Buddhist, mistaken for a Muslim.

The local authorities in Thapraychaung had claimed to have detained the three rapists several days before the bus incident. The victims of the bus attack were not from Rakhine state, and were returning home to Yangon, the country’s commercial capital. Soon gruesome pictures of the victims were circulating the internet and small protests erupted within Yangon’s Muslim community.

This was not to prompt a moment of national soul-searching. Rather it marked the first salvo of fresh bigotry, unleashed against Myanmar’s Muslim minority on the internet and beyond. Discrimination against the Rohingyas has never been subtle. They are not allowed to travel within Myanmar, nor to serve in the police—technically, they do not even have citizenship (though this has been questioned in parliament). But their persecution has suddenly turned fervid.

It was evident in the state-run press. The Myanmar Alin, a newspaper, referred to the murdered Muslims with the derogatory term kalar, a word derived from Sanskrit which means “black”. In Myanmar it is used as an epithet for people with South Asian appearances, such as the Rohingya. More surprisingly, dozens of Burmese human-rights activists (many whom are themselves granted status as asylum-seekers by the West) have rounded on the country’s loosely defined community of Muslims—which includes plenty of ethnic Burmese, as well as Rohingyas and the descendants of South Asians.

Regarded by activists as the “most persecuted ethnic group in Asia”, the Rohingya inhabit the impoverished borderlands between Myanmar and Bangladesh. Much like their Buddhist-Rakhine neighbours they traverse both sides of the border. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have crossed into Bangladesh since Burma’s independence, fleeing racial and religious persecution not just at the hands of their Buddhist countrymen, the Buddhist Rakhines, but also the Burmese national authorities.

Rakhine state was once independent. Burma annexed it in 1784, when the British had barely set foot in the Irrawaddy delta. At the time the conquering Burmese induced Buddhist Rakhines to seek shelter in Bengal, to the west. There they established the town of Cox’s Bazaar, with the help of a British East India Company official, Hiram Cox.

In 1977, almost two centuries later, the independent government of Burma conducted a notorious military operation, codenamed Nagar Min (“Dragon King”), which forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas to flee across the border to the part of Bengal that had become Bangladesh. One of the victims of that putsch, now resident of Khutapalong camp near Cox’s Bazaar, told this correspondent that she fled only after Burmese soldiers butchered her eight-month-old child, on the grounds that she could not produce a permit.

Rakhine state’s tensions have a long history. They were on the simmer earlier this month. The statewide police presence had been increased since the massacre of the bus passengers at Taungkok. On June 8th, as Rohingya gathered for prayers, an incident between a Rohingya boy on a bicycle and a Rakhine on a motorbike turned ugly and attracted the police’s attention. Soon they turned to riot gear, and the angry street turned to stone-throwing. The police force that moved in with reinforcements already had a reputation for the near-genocidal purges against the Rohingya.

After Friday’s violence the government declared a Section 144 criminal order and by Saturday it was a curfew. According to Chris Lewa, an expert on regional affairs, the order to stay in doors applied only to Rohingyas. It did nothing to stop Buddhist Rakhine mobs looting and pillaging. They were filmed burning Rohingya villages, apparently with impunity; they were happy to speak before video cameras while houses burned in the background. The mobs seemed to rage without any fear of police action. At least one Rohingya woman was raped in the mayhem.

Fearing a new influx of refugees, Bangladesh meanwhile tightened security on its border. As many as 1,500 fleeing Rohingyas were stranded, left waiting on boats that idled in the Naf river, unable to land. Bangladesh is already home to perhaps 250,000 Rohingya refugees. Their presence in that crowded country has long been a cause of political bickering.

By Sunday Thein Sein had declared a state of military emergency under Section 413 of the country’s 2008 constitution: the first since its nominally democratic government took office in March 2011. The previous criminal order was deemed to weak, so once again the army rules in Rakhine. The UN pulled out the small staff it keeps in the area, which were held to be the last neutral observers on the ground.

Rioting spread quickly to Sittwe, the state capital. Local reports describe Rakhine and Rohingya mobs torching houses and being dispersed by armed police.

Tin Soe, the editor of the Rohingya-run Kaladan news network, welcomes the military state of emergency; he lacks faith entirely in the civilian police force. On the road between the main Rohingya urban centres, Buthidaung and Maungdaw, Tin Soe claims, the streams were clogged with dead bodies. He asserts the mobs’ killing of Rohingyas was done in concert with the police, who were Buddhists siding with their co-religionists.

Tin Soe once petitioned for the end of military rule and the release of all political prisoners. But now one of the most prominent of the former political prisoners, Ko Ko Gyi, a member of “the ’88 generation students”, has blamed the violence in Rakhine state on elements coming from “across the border”. The implication, as ever, is that the Rohingya are not a legitimate people of Myanmar. Indeed, Ko Ko Gyi made it explicit: the Rohingya are not an “ethnic group” of the country, he says, and so somehow they must be to blame. The same rationale is not applied Myanmar’s other ethnic groups, many of whom have a “more Burmese” racial appearance (ie, they look less like South Asians).

Ko Ko Gyi’s sentiments were echoed by the popular press, which has taken to calling Rohingyas “Bengalis”, and publishing vile comments on pictures of refugees. Many of the comments posted online call for ethnic cleansing. One thing shared across the spectrum of religious and political hues is a sense of deep foreboding. Leading activist from among the ethnic Chin minority expressed the fear that in Myanmar “we might go back to the dark age before we have even stepped into the path of light.”

A loathing that fomented for decades

With the eruption of violence in western Myanmar, the plight of the Rohingya worsened, though perpetrators can be found on both sides of the ethnic and religious divide with power politics from Yangon adding a corrosive element to the mix

When photographer Suthep Kristasanawarin arrived in the western state of Rakhine in Myanmar almost two years ago, he sensed tension in the relatively peaceful town of Sittwe, the state capital.


TO BETTER DAYS: A Rohingya refugee offers prayers for the dead in a makeshift camp. Unofficial camps housing thousands of Rohingyas lack sanitation and healthcare facilities as they are not under the supervision of the UN refugee agency.

"I could feel the deep distrust between ethnic minorities there _ the Buddhist Rakhine and Muslim Rohingya. I wasn't so surprised when I heard about the violence in Rakhine State; however, it came sooner that I thought," he said in a phone interview with Spectrum. He was referring to the killing and rioting that has torn through the western coastal region, separated from central Myanmar by the Arakan mountain range.

Suthep went there for his photo documentary undertaking called the Rohingya Project, which he has been working on since 2008, about the plight of the stateless ethnic group. Many have been forced to flee their hometowns in recent years for adjacent Bangladesh or Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand and Indonesia, with some going as far as Australia in search of a better life.

What he witnessed in Sittwe was mutual hatred.

Suthep recalled visiting a couple in a rural part of the district. The husband was a Rohingya who had just served time in the local prison _ for getting married to a Rakhine woman.

The wife was banished from her village after the marriage. And when the couple settled down together, they became a target of hatred.

"I was being watched by the whole town. Some villagers peeked in to see why I had anything to do with this couple. I thought I was at risk of being thrown out of the city if someone reported my visit to authorities, so I had no choice but to leave as quickly as possible," Suthep said.

The photographer believes the current loathing dividing ethnicities is a remnant of conflicts dating from imperialist times, when Myanmar was a British colony from the Anglo-Burmese (Myanmar) wars of 1824-1885 until 1948. The conflict between the Rohingya and Rakhine has turned into an open war with a massive casualty count.


CHASED AWAY: Abu Karlam, a Rohingya exile who has been living in Thailand for 31 years after fleeing Myanmar.

Both the Rakhine and Rohingya are minorities with long ties to the region, and both have been treated as second class residents by the ruling Burmese; however, the treatment of the Rohingya has been far worse than that of other ethnic groups.

The Rohingya are Muslims of South Asian descent, while most Myanmar minorities are of Southeast Asian origin and predominantly Buddhist. The Rohingya are related to the Bengali groups in the Chittagong Division of neighbouring Bangladesh. Like the Buddhist Rakhine, they traverse both sides of the border.

According to a report by the Arakan Project, a non-governmental organisation working in the area, since the military took over Myanmar in 1962 the Rohingya have increasingly faced exclusion. In 1982, they were rendered stateless by the Burma Citizenship Law, which mainly confers the right to a nationality to members of the 135 national races listed by the government. The denial of citizenship is the key mechanism to institutionalising discrimination against the group. Severe restrictions on their movement and marriages, arrests, extortion, forced labour and confiscation of land have been arbitrarily imposed.

This discrimination also causes the Rohingya to occupy the bottom economic rung in the area.

Suthep says the Rohingya in Sittwe are treated as outcasts, working menial jobs for both the Burmese and the Rakhine, such as cleaners or water carriers. They are barred from having a higher education or working as government officers or teachers. Most of all, they feel they are being badly mistreated, which generates resentment against other groups.

The Arakan Project estimates that 270,000 Rohingya have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh in recent years and ended up in shelters set up by international organisations.

Many have been turned back, however, especially in recent weeks, as Bangladesh considers Rohingya, having lived in Myanmar for centuries, as non-citizens and a potential burden on the impoverished and overpopulated country's resources. Human Rights Watch last week urged Bangladesh to open its border to Rohingya, saying it was putting lives at risk.

Some Rohingya over the years have also fled to other countries in the hope of finding a place where they can live with integrity. Among them is Abu Karlam, a 51-year-old exile who has lived in Thailand for 31 years.

Abu Karlam was from a peasant family in Mynbia, a small town close to Sittwe. He said one day a platoon of soldiers stopped at his village and coerced teenagers to work as carriers in the fighting against other ethnic groups.

He fled back to his village after being badly beaten by soldiers. Fearing severe retribution from the authorities, he left his wife and young daughter behind and started the long hard journey to Thailand.

Though his life in Thailand has been a struggle, he believe it's still far better than living in his homeland.
Ko Ko Gyi.

According to Abu Karlam, now vice-president of the Burmese Rohingya Association in Thailand, there are around 9,000 Rohingya across Thailand, both documented and illegal immigrants. In Bangkok between 300 and 400 are registered with the association.

Currently all of them are worried about what is happening in Rakhine State.

"We are trying to contact everyone we can think of to help Rohingya. We went to the UN office and also are pleading to the media to please help our people from being killed and starved," said Abu Karlam. "We are the victims. This is a scheme by the ruling class to drive us from our land."

However, they don't know whether their move will be fruitful. Though Abu Karlam said the Rohingya were victimised, many blamed the start of the violence on his people.

The Rohingya have been accused by the state media and the Rakhine of instigating the violence. The recent unrest began when a group of Muslim men were accused of raping and murdering a Rakhine woman. Retaliation by the Rakhine and large-scale riots followed. Government media and the Rakhine also blame the Rohingya for widespread rioting, looting and killing.

Chris Lewa from the Arakan Project told Spectrum that the number of deaths is unknown but certainly far higher than that provided by the government. Moreover, Ms Lewa believed law enforcement agencies are also responsible for many deaths.

Sittwe and Maungdaw, where the army has been deployed, have become calmer since Wednesday. According to Ms Lewa, the security situation is still precarious and extremely tense, with occasional reports of shooting and looting in these areas.

"Sectarian unrest has now spread to Rathedaung. Houses have been looted and torched in five Muslim villages in Rathedaung since Thursday night. One of these villages is Choot Pyin, close to the south of Maungdaw township. Frightened villagers from Rathedaung fled to South Maungdaw where locals gave them shelter. But the Nasaka, the border security forces, chased them and forced them to return to their village," said Ms Lewa.

She also expressed fears that the communal unrest could resurface and spread to new areas.

For Ms Lewa, the causes of this communal violence are varied and complex, and rooted in longstanding institutionalised racism in Myanmar and official policies of discrimination imposed on the Rohingya in Arakan.

The hostility of the Rakhine Buddhist community in Arakan towards the Rohingya is related to the perception that overpopulation in Bangladesh could threaten their territorial integrity.

Different in ethnicity and religion from the majority population in Myanmar, successive regimes have portrayed the Rohingya as illegal foreigners who deserve no rights to citizenship. The new government has reaffirmed these policies on national security grounds during parliamentarian sessions.

Both Ms Lewa and Suthep agreed that the shift from deep distrust to extreme violence is a downside of the recent reforms implemented by the Myanmar government to promote democracy in the country.

''The loosening of constraints has provided the space for such sectarian violence to erupt, but that is not the only cause,'' said Ms Lewa.

''The recent relaxation of authoritarian rule and more freedom of expression has been the vehicle to let loose simmering tensions and bring them to boiling point. The spark was the rape of a Rakhine woman allegedly by Muslims.''

On the evening of May 28, Ma Thidar Htwe, 26 and a resident of Thapraychaung in Rambree Township, was brutally raped and killed while returning home from nearby Kyauknimaw village.

Three suspects from nearby Kyaukhtara Muslim village, are in police custody. There is some question over whether they are Rohingya, but on June 3, 10 Muslims were killed by a Buddhist mob in an apparent revenge attack. Violence then became more pronounced on both sides.

When army troops were called out to help quell the violence on June 8, a dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed, with President Thein Sein declaring a state of emergency in the area, giving the military full administrative powers to keep order. According to Ms Lewa, though, the order to stay indoors applied only to Rohingya.

Rakhine, however, have also been badly affected by the unrest. According to the state government, tens of thousands of people have been displaced by the violence, with 31,884 displaced people being sheltered at monasteries and schools. Of 2,528 houses that were burned down, 1,192 belonged to Rakhines and 1,336 belonged to Rohingya.

It was also reported that nine Buddhist monasteries and seven mosques were burned. Unrest hit eight areas in all: Maungdaw, Buthidaung, Sittwe, Rambree Island, Mrauk Oo, Ponna Kyun, Pauk Taw and Kyauktaw, with the most damage and deaths in Maungdaw and Sittwe.

As Spectrum went to press, according to Htein Lin, security and border affairs minister for Rakhine, 29 people _ 16 Muslim and 13 Buddhists _ had been killed since riots broke out on June 8, not including the mob attack of June 3. Large numbers of people still have no access to food and other important staple goods.

There have been some conflicting theories on the origins of the violence. One prominent former political prisoner and ally of Aung San Suu Kyi, Ko Ko Gyi, has blamed the problems in Rakhine State on elements coming from across the border. The Rohingya are not an ethnic group of the country, Ko Ko Gyi said.

Myanmar expert and author Bertil Lintner told The Week that ''the violence is clearly well orchestrated and not as spontaneous as we are being led to believe''.

''The government is very worried about the support commanded by Suu Kyi,'' Mr Lintner said. ''It wants to force her into a position where she has to make a pro-Rohingya public statement that could damage her popularity among Burma's Buddhists, where anti-Muslim sentiment runs high. On the other hand, if she remains silent she will disappoint those who support her firm stand on human rights.''

One thing that is certain is that the plight of the Rohingya will not be resolved soon.

''What we can do now is only pray to God to help protect those who are affected by this deadly situation,'' Mr Abu Karlam said.


CRIPPLED DREAMS: A photo from Suthep Kristasanawarin’s Rohingya Project shows Mohammad Hussein, who fled to Malaysia three years ago hoping to find work. On the way he contracted an infection that was left untreated. When he received medical attention, his leg was amputated. He now relies on begging and help from other Rohingya for his survival.

Myanmar boat people swap violence for desperation

 At first, the boat bobbing in the water in the middle of the night appeared to be empty. But when Bangladeshi villagers took a closer look, they found a baby too weak to cry, a refugee from marauding mobs in Myanmar apparently abandoned by her family.

The cleft-lipped infant, just weeks old, is among hundreds of Rohingya Muslims who fled this month's sectarian violence in Myanmar's western state of Rakhine, packing themselves into rough wooden boats and heading for the shores of neighboring Bangladesh.

No one knows how many made it ashore. Bangladesh has ordered its border guards to push the boats back, determined that - with at least quarter of a million "illegal migrants" already here - there must be no more.

The baby, named Fatima by the family that has taken her in, is out of the danger that she and her family faced in Myanmar, but she joins a throng of stateless people in southeast Bangladesh who - for the most part - lead desperate lives of squalor, deprivation and discrimination.

Among them is Mohammad Kamal, a young religious leader from Rakhine's Maungdaw district, where ferocious violence erupted on June 9 between Rohingyas and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and spread across the state. He escaped to Bangladesh in 2006 after his brother and others were jailed in a crackdown on Muslim clerics.

Kamal, now 28, settled in a makeshift "unregistered" camp, where - along with some 20,000 others - he is not recognized as a refugee and where even international aid agencies have to work under the radar because Bangladesh has not granted them legal status.

"I went out for a walk one day last year and was arrested because I had no documents," said Kamal, pulling up a trouser leg to show a line of angry sores that broke out during the following nine months he spent in jail.

Behind him, naked children play in a muddy pool and the rickety dwellings of an overcrowded shanty town - his camp - rise up, lashed by monsoon rains.

In 2010, the authorities forcibly evicted thousands from a makeshift camp. The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres recounted at the time that some Rohingyas had been thrown into the Naf River and told to swim the 3 km (2 miles) back to Myanmar, and the organization said it had treated many for beatings, machete wounds and even rape.

"A DESPERATE LIFE"

Craig Sanders, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees' representative in Dhaka, said that although Bangladesh has disowned the Rohingyas - dubbing them illegal economic migrants - it has shown "tremendous generosity over many years".

Rohingyas first came in large numbers to the South Asian nation in 1973, and over the years gained a reputation for drug-smuggling, gun-running and human trafficking.

A sudden flood of more than quarter of a million arrived in 1991-92 after a spasm of repression by the security forces in military-ruled Myanmar. Those that remain from that wave, now numbering some 30,000, live in two official camps where the U.N. provides everything from shelter and water supply to healthcare and schooling.

But at least 200,000 others - probably many more - have settled on the Bangladesh side of the 200-km (125-mile) border, mingling with the population where they struggle to find employment or squeezing into unofficial camps.

It is these "unregistered" Rohingyas who are most vulnerable.

"It's an extremely desperate life for these people," said one worker for a humanitarian group that provides assistance illegally at one camp, asking not to be named. "They have been here for such a long time and there is no prospect of change."

UNHCR's Sanders has crossed swords with the government in recent days over its decision to turn back the boatloads of traumatized Rohingyas.

"Bangladesh, one more time, is being urged to step forward to deal with a situation that is not of their making," he said. "We are not trying to push them into a corner on this issue, but there is a question of fair and right treatment here."

BANGLADESH SAYS "NO MORE"

There have been sketchy and conflicting reports of the communal violence that erupted in Rakhine, but scores are feared dead after widespread torching of houses by both sides.

Abdus Salam, one of 10 Rohingyas who reached Bangladesh and are now hiding in a coastal village to avoid arrest, told Reuters last week: "The Rakhine torched our houses, killed our relatives, assaulted our women. They were killing Muslims. When we protested, the government forces also shot our people dead. Then we started fleeing."

Muhammad Zamir, Dhaka's chief information commissioner, maintains that the authorities have treated the boat people humanely, providing those they turn away with water, medicines and fuel for the journey back, assisting a woman who gave birth on arrival and treating those with gunshot wounds in hospital.

"We want to help the refugees, they have rights," Zamir told Reuters in the coastal town of Cox's Bazar, a bumpy three-hour drive from the shores where Rohingyas are being pushed back.

"But we can only look after them to a point. We really can't handle any more."

He argues that, as a densely populated and poverty-plagued country of 150 million, Bangladesh has played its part. Now, as democracy stirs in Myanmar, it is time for its neighbor to address the root causes of the chronic exodus of Rohingyas, and for the international community to put pressure on it to do so.

SILENT CRISIS

There has been some dismay in this part of Bangladesh at the hard line taken by the government on the new arrivals. The populations share the same ethnicity, religion and dialect, and they are so close that if you call a Rohingya on a mobile phone in Myanmar it is likely to be a Bangladesh number.

Yet the plight of those already here gets little attention.

A report by U.S.-based rights group Refugees International last year described a "silent crisis" of abuse, starvation and detention faced by stateless Rohingyas in Bangladesh.

According to UNHCR, a 2011 survey in the two official camps found that 17 percent of children between six months and six years were suffering from acute malnutrition, higher than the emergency threshold set by the World Health Organisation. In the makeshift camps, malnutrition rates are even higher.

"It's a hopeless situation," said the aid worker. "You treat the children who are sick, and then they fall ill again because they are not getting the right food."

For now at least, tiny Fatima is safe. She has been taken in by a fisherman and his wife who already have four sons and two daughters. But an uncertain future awaits her, stateless in the land of her refuge.