By Rohingya Mirror
March 11, 2017
Maungdaw – The
Myanmar government has denied the displaced Rohingya people in Maungdaw
Township the right to fully reclaim their lands after they were internally
displaced from their homes last year, according to the reliable sources.
The Myanmar military
along with the Border Guard Police (BGP) almost entirely burnt down numbers of
Rohingya villages during the so-called ‘Clearance Operation’ by the Myanmar
military in October-November in 2016 forcing thousands of people to flee from
the country or internally displaced.
As the situation has
calmed down to an extent now, many displaced people taking shelter in the
neighborhoods are returning to their villages and erecting shelter-tents/huts
on their original lands. On April 4, the Maungdaw Township Administration
ordered the village administrators of the mentioned villages to demolish the
huts erected by the displaced people.
The government has
declared that the lands of the burned villages now belong to the government and
the displaced people have no longer rights to claim their own lands. The
government has been implementing a rehabilitation plan for the displaced
people, which they oppose.
“The military have
burnt down our homes. Now, the authorities claim that we no longer own our
lands. They are instead giving us a 40 square feet of plot for a family which
has three to four households and said they are giving us these little ground
plots on the ground of sympathy” said an internally displaced Rohingya while
speaking to Rohingya Vision TV.
In Arakan state (now
known as Rakhine state), a Rohingya family has many members resulting from the
government’s refusals to issue or separate ‘New Household Registration Lists’
growing numbers of family members.
The displaced man
continued “me; my grand-parents; my parents; and my siblings and their child;
all are in one ‘Family List.’ The government has refused to separate our family
lists despite our repeated applications. And they complain we, Rohingyas, have
big families and many children.
“And these huge
numbers of people can’t live in a single house and so, we need to build small
side-house but we are only allowed to have one house as per our family
household list. Now, according to the current rehabilitation plan, it is like
at least 40 people have will cram and live in a small space of 40 square feet.”
After the Myanmar
armed forces such as the military and the Border Guard Police (BGP) burned down
thousands of the Rohingya homes at the villages of ‘Wapeik’, ‘Pwint Phyu
Chaung’, ‘Kyar Gaung Taung’, ‘Myau Taung’, ‘Ye Khae Chaung KhwaSone’, ‘Dar Gyi
Zar’, ‘Thayet Oak’, ‘Thu Oo Hla’, Kyet Yoe Pyin’, ‘Ngar Sar Kyu’, and ‘Oo Kyi
Kyar’ etc on the pretext of ‘the so-called Operation Clearance’ on October 9,
2016. More than 70,000 people have fled to Bangladesh, while thousands remain
as the IDP (internally displaced people) in the country.
After March 3, the
authorities levelled the burnt Rohingya homes at the village of ‘Wapeik’ and
destroyed the earlier shape/map of the village. Confiscating two-third of the
earlier Rohingya-owned lands in the village, the government has planned to
share only one-third of the village to villagers. Similar planning have been
implemented all over northern Maungdaw.