Subash Rudra and others who belong to a tiny Hindu minority among the Rohingya refugee community sheltering in southeastern Bangladesh say they are waiting anxiously for official word on when they can return to their home villages in neighboring Myanmar.
Rudra, a father of eight children who is from Chikonchhari, a village in Maungdaw township in Rakhine state, is part of a Hindu refugee community here that numbers around 439 people.
They live in a refugee camp built exclusively for Hindus along the Ukhia-Teknaf road in Cox’s Bazar district, and apart from thousands of Rohingya Muslim refugees huddling at other camps and settlements across the area. Their camp is known in Bengali as “Hindupara,” which means “Hindu neighborhood” in English.
“We have come to know from the NGOs that Bangladesh and Myanmar signed a repatriation deal. If they want, we will go,” Rudra, 60, told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.
In November, Bangladesh and Myanmar officials agreed to repatriate about 700,000 Rohingya who fled violence in Rakhine state beginning in 2016.
The agreement called for repatriation to begin on Jan. 22, but Bangladesh has not completed preparing its first list of about 100,000 refugees for verification by the Myanmar government. Bangladesh officials have said the entire process could take up two years.
Rudra said he and other Hindus were forced to cross into Bangladesh when some “black-dressed masked men” stormed into Chikonchhari at the end of August 2017 and torched their houses.
In September 2017, Myanmar authorities said they had uncovered mass graves containing 45 bodies of Hindus thought to have been killed by Rohingya Muslim insurgents in Maungdaw.
At the time, Myanmar officials reported that a Hindu man from Yebaw Kya village in Maungdaw pointed out the sites, after fleeing to Bangladesh following deadly attacks by Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army rebels on police and border guards in northern Rakhine, on Aug. 25.
“Here, there is no violence. But we have no work. We cannot go outside camp and depend on relief. Every day we eat rice and pulses – no fish and no meat. This is boring. Here I wear torn clothes, but I am rich in Chikonchhari,” Rudra said.
When the violence started, one of his sons fled to India while two sons and three daughters accompanied him to Bangladesh. Two of his daughters stayed in Myanmar.
“We expected that we could go to Rakhine by the end of January. Now, nobody can say when we can leave. We are frustrated,” he said.
Other Rohingya Hindus at the camp expressed similar views.
“None of us want to stay here. We want to leave as soon as possible if there is a guarantee that we will not be tortured. We urge Bangladesh and Burma to take us back to our land,” Ratna Rudra, another refugee from Chikonchhari, told BenarNews.
A barbed-wire fence is being erected around the camp for Hindu refugees to protect its occupants, Md. Shamsud Douza, a deputy secretary of the commissioner’s office in Cox’s Bazar, told BenarNews.
“We have set up a police outpost to ensure their safety and security. They have been kept separate from the Muslim Rohingya refugees,” Douza said.
Reported by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.
For the refugees to return to Rakhine State, it should be up to them and should not pressure them to return to Rakhine State. Please, don't force refugees to return the Rakhine State.
I don't think the Burmese side is ready for to accept thousands of refugees because the temporary housing isn't ready for thousand of refugees and also the security is weak. The Burmese Government is not wealthy Government and the Bengali refugees’ resettlement program needs billion of dollars.
Also, I think the UN, OIC and Media will accuse the Burmese Government for running the Nazi concentration camp if the Government has deployed Army soldiers to protect refugees in temporary camps from the Islamic terrorist group RASA's attacking.
I don’t believe the UN, OIC, the UN OHCHR and the Media are sincerely helping to Burma for return of refugees from Bangladesh.
The UN, OHCHR, the OIC and Media want to see a chaotic situation in the Rakhine State instead of peaceful and stable in the Rakhine State because they want to create the UN monitor a Safe Zone for the illegal immigrant Bengali Muslim peoples.
The Burmese Government must not fall into their trap and Government must tell them the UN monitor a Safe Zone will not be allowed in Burmese soil. The refugees who want to come back and they have proved their grandparents and parents were born in Burma and then they can come back and it’s up to them. They are children of illegal immigrant Bangladeshi citizens. Bangladeshi Government must resettle some of Bengali Muslims who can’t prove their grandparents and parents were born in Burma.
Also the Burmese Government must adopt Bangladeshi Government program for birth control for returned Bengali family. The UN, OHCHR, the OIC and Media will criticize the Burmese Government if the Government has adopted Bangladeshi Government’s birth control program for Bengali Muslim. The Burmese Government should not pay attention to the UN, OHCR, the OIC and the Media because theses organizations and individual are creating problems for the Burma. They rather want to see the Burmese Government as failed and chaotic country because they can create a new independent Muslim state in Northern Rakhine state if the Burma is becoming a state like Syria or Libya.
Jan 26, 2018 02:02 PM
