YANGON (Reuters) - As the world was focused
on abortive efforts to begin repatriating hundreds of thousands of Rohingya
refugees from Bangladesh to Myanmar last month, hundreds of their fellow
Muslims still in Myanmar were boarding boats seeking to escape the country.
Myanmar’s Minister of Social Welfare, Relief
and Resettlement Win Myat Aye said the government was working with the United
Nations on a national strategy to close camps housing people forced out of
their homes by violence in Rakhine and elsewhere, known as internally displaced
persons or IDPs.
Their attempted flight cast the spotlight
back on 128,000 Rohingya and other displaced Muslims still living in crowded
camps in Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine, six years after Buddhist mobs
razed most of their homes.
The government of Aung San Suu Kyi, under
international pressure to address their plight, says it is now closing the
camps on the grounds that doing so will help development and put the labour of
camp residents to good use.
But Reuters interviews with more than a dozen
residents from five camps and internal United Nations documents show the move
simply means building new, more permanent homes next to the camps - rather than
allowing them to return to the areas from which they fled - leaving their
situation little changed.
Those that have moved into the new
accommodation remain under the same severe movement restrictions as before,
residents and staff working in the camps say. A network of official checkpoints
and threats of violence by local Buddhists prevent Muslims from moving freely
in Rakhine. As a result, those sources say, they are cut off from sources of
livelihoods and most services, and reliant on humanitarian handouts.
“Yes, we moved to new houses – it’s correct
to say (the camp is closed),” said Kyaw Aye, a community leader from a camp
called Nidin, in central Rakhine. “But we’ll never be able to stand on our own
feet because we can’t go anywhere.”
Reuters spoke to displaced Muslims in Rakhine
by phone as reporters are denied independent access to the camps.
There were no legal restrictions on the
movements of displaced people in Rakhine, as long as they accepted a so-called
national verification card that also gives them equal access to healthcare and
education, he said in a written response to Reuters’ questions.
Aid workers and Muslim residents say severe
restrictions persist even on those who have accepted the identity card, which
most Rohingya reject because they say it treats them as foreigners who have to
prove their nationality.
The U.N. chief in Myanmar, Knut Ostby, warned
in a Sept. 24 private note that the government’s plan for camp closures “risks
further entrenching segregation while denying IDPs many of their fundamental
human rights”.
Ostby’s office declined to comment on the
note, but in a written response to Reuters’ questions said the U.N. had been
invited to comment on the government’s plans for closing camps and was
preparing its response.
That response would include recommendations
that all displaced people be granted freedom of movement, were involved in
planning their resettlement and could return to their homes or another place of
their choosing, Ostby said.
MARITIME ESCAPE
Rohingya community leaders say that improving
conditions for those still living in Rakhine is one of the keys to persuading
the hundreds of thousands sheltering in refugee camps in Bangladesh to return.
Some 730,000 fled a military crackdown after
attacks by Rohingya militants in August 2017. U.N.-mandated investigators have
said the Myanmar military unleashed a campaign of killings, rape and arson with
“genocidal intent”. Myanmar has denied almost all the accusations against its
troops, who it says engaged in legitimate operations against terrorists.
Refugees baulked at a plan for repatriating
them that was supposed to begin in mid-November, arguing that conditions were
not right for return.
Meanwhile, at least three boats, each
carrying scores of men, women and children, have departed from Rakhine for
Malaysia since monsoon rains abated in October, following the hazardous
maritime escape route used for years by Rohingya fleeing what they say is
persecution in Myanmar.
“If they are making the choice to go by boat,
it’s clear proof of the conditions in the IDP camps,” said Khin Maung, a
Rohingya youth activist in Bangladesh.
He is in touch with fellow Muslims who are
“living like prisoners” in the camps in central Rakhine, Khin Maung said. “If
they are living like that how can we agree to go back?”
Win Myat Aye, the minister, said Myanmar was
working to improve the lives of both the IDPs and potential returnees.
“I assume that the displaced people are leaving
with boats because they (have) not fully understood what we arranged for their
accommodations, livelihoods and socio-economic development,” he said.
“INVESTING IN SEGREGATION”
One camp, among the 18 remaining in Rakhine,
lies outside a central Rakhine town of Myebon, which was torn by communal
violence in 2012.
The 3,000-strong Muslim community was
expelled and put in the camp, known as Taungpaw, on a narrow strip between the
now Buddhist-only town and the Bay of Bengal, in what was supposed to be a
temporary arrangement.
This year authorities built 200 new houses on
rice paddies next to the camp, despite concerns that the area was prone to
flooding. They were inundated in early June. In September, the government also
built two new buildings set to become Muslim-only schoolhouses.
“This is a sign the Rakhine state government
is investing in permanent segregation rather than promoting integration,” said a
previously unpublished memo dated Sept. 30 and circulated by U.N. officials
setting out the concerns of aid workers operating in the camps. The U.N. said
it did not comment on leaked documents.
Some Muslims in Myebon have Myanmar
citizenship and others have accepted national verification cards. They say they
still cannot visit the town, where communal tensions have stayed high since the
2012 violence. Rakhine Buddhists have at times blocked aid deliveries to the
camp.
“Although they gave people new homes, if
there’s still no freedom to move, there’s still no opportunity to do business,”
said camp resident Cho Cho, 49.
Aung Thar Kyaw, a leader among the Rakhine
Buddhist community in Myebon, said the two communities were too different to
live together, labelling Muslims “so aggressive”.
“The government already built them new homes
so they don’t need to enter town,” he said.
*5pics
Lei Lei Aye, an official in the Ministry of
Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, referred questions about the specific
concerns in Taungpaw to Rakhine state government officials, who could not be
reached for comment.
“POLICY OF APARTHEID”
Despite the humanitarian community’s efforts
to convince Myanmar to change course, including by giving technical advice on
camp closures, “the only scenario that is unfolding before our eyes is the
implementation of a policy of apartheid with the permanent segregation of all
Muslims, the vast majority of whom are stateless Rohingya, in central Rakhine,”
said an internal “discussion note” prepared by the U.N.’s refugee agency in
late September, first reported by Frontier Myanmar magazine and reviewed by
Reuters.
Win Myat Aye said he was “not concerned”
about such warnings because the government was progressing with its camp
closure strategy in consultation with U.N. agencies, non-governmental groups
and foreign diplomats.
The U.N. estimates humanitarian assistance in
Rakhine will cost about $145 million next year.
Former residents of Nidin, about 100 km (62
miles) north of Taungpaw, told Reuters their situation had barely improved
since state media declared the camp closed in August.
They are unable to return to Kyauktaw, the
town where many lived and worked before the 2012 violence.
Tun Wai, a Rakhine Buddhist doctor in
Kyauktaw, said Muslims could “go freely outside the town”. But if they try to
return, he said, “they will be killed”.
Soe Lwin, deputy chief of the Kyauktaw police
station, said Muslims “can’t enter the town”, but denied they would meet with
violence. “We have the rule of law,” he said.
The Muslims now live marooned among rice
paddies that do not belong to them. Rohingya fishermen say what they catch
barely covers their rental costs as they do not own their equipment.
And with no clean water supply, children have
contracted skin rashes from washing in agricultural run-off.
“We can’t even support our children because
we don’t have income,” said former camp resident Khin Hla, 43. “Without aid, we
would starve.”