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A Rohingya woman and children walk in Kutupalong
Camp, in
Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Jan.18, 2017
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Lacking adequate food, shelter and sanitation, many
Rohingya Muslim refugees who fled into Bangladesh from Myanmar are marrying
local men in the hope of achieving citizenship and basic services.
Such marriages are illegal, and often involve polygamy,
child marriage or abandonment, BenarNews learned during a recent visit to
Rohingya refugee camps in southeastern Bangladesh.
Yet both sides see potential advantages – at least at
first.
Sultan Ahmed, a 29-year-old resident of Teknaf
sub-district in Cox’s Bazar, recently married Samuda Begum, 16, who entered
Bangladesh from Myanmar seven or eight years ago and lives in the Muchhni
Rohingya camp.
“My first wife has no problem; I have married again as a
hobby,” Sultan, a father of three, told BenarNews. “I live with my first wife;
I often go to Samuda and give her some money for daily expenses.”
After crossing the border three years ago to escape
violence and hunger in Myanmar, Nazu Begum, now 25, married a Bangladeshi man
who has since abandoned her.
“I got married with a man from Noakhali with the hope of
getting citizenship. Life had been peaceful. But my husband left Teknaf after
the birth of two children,” said Nazu, who lives in Kochubunia, a village just
across the border from the Maungdaw district of Myanmar.
Her husband’s care for his family “withered away” after
his work as a mason in Teknaf dried up, Nazu said. Like Samuda, she remains
stateless.
But Nazu, who works as a maid at hotels and homes, has no
plans to return to Myanmar. “I will educate my children here and settle here,”
Nazu told BenarNews.
‘Our first choice’
U.N. officials say some 65,000 Rohingya Muslims have
entered Bangladesh since October 2016, fleeing a brutal military crackdown
launched on the minority community in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state after
Rohingya militants attacked border guard posts, killing nine officers.
Many women said they fled to Bangladesh with their
children after security forces either killed or took away their husbands. In
addition, 17 of 54 women BenarNews interviewed in the camps said they had been
raped before crossing the border.
But life in Bangladesh is also full of hardship.
Prior to the latest influx, about 35,000 refugees lived
in Cox’s Bazar in two UN-registered refugee camps, and 300,000 more in vast
settlements immediately adjacent, where many homes are constructed of bamboo
and plastic, and roughly 5,000 people have access to a single water source and
latrine, a BenarNews correspondent witnessed.
Bangladesh has refused to grant the Rohingya refugee
status because it considers them citizens of Myanmar, while Myanmar considers
the Rohingya illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and has denied then citizenship
and access to basic services for decades.
Rohingyas are eager for citizenship as a way to escape
the camps, gain civic rights and remain in Bangladesh. Families are willing to
accept polygamy or much older men for their daughters because they believe the
marriage will secure their future in Bangladesh.
“There is no education opportunity (in the camps); (we)
have to share a small room with many children. So, the children are arranged
marriage as soon as they reach adulthood. Bangladeshi boys and girls are our
first choice,” Nur Mohammad, a resident of Leda camp, told BenarNews.
‘Nobody abides by the law’
Yet the path to citizenship is far from guaranteed.
Marriages with non-citizens cannot be registered in
Bangladesh. And since the marriage is not registered, authorities cannot take
legal actions against men who marry Rohingya women.
“Marrying a Rohingya is an offense, but nobody abides by
the law. A Rohingya couple thinks they can stay here legally if one of their
children is married with a Bangladeshi national,” Mohammad Ali, a former
lawmaker from Teknaf, told BenarNews.
“So, they do not hesitate to settle marriage of a young
girl with an aged Bangladeshi man. Such condition is making way for the local
men to marry again; this has become a social blight,” Ali said Ali.
“Getting Bangladeshi citizenship is not easy even when
they marry the locals; but the procedure is easier if they marry a
Bangladeshi,” said Mozammel Haque, president of Rohingya Resistance Committee,
a Teknaf-based organization that opposes Rohingya integration into Bangladesh.
If a wife or husband lives with a Bangladeshi spouse,
they may be entered onto voter lists or put in line to receive a national
identity card, because the two populations are hard to tell apart, locals told
BenarNews.
Authorities say they have no data on how many Rohingya
are marrying Bangladeshis, or how many achieve citizenship this way.
“We have been trying to stop marriage between the
Rohingya and the Bangladeshis; we take measures to stop it whenever we get such
tip off,” Ali Hossain, the deputy commissioner of Cox’s Bazar, told BenarNews.
“But marriage is a matter of mutual understanding and
hard to check if done secretly,” he said.