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The case of 30 men, women and children raise worries about the opaque treatment of the Muslim minority in Southeast Asia.
Rohingya laborers rest after working at a refugee camp on Aug. 22, 2019 in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Myanmar's military crackdown on the ethnic Muslim minority forced over 700,000 to flee to Bangladesh from violence and torture.
YANGON, MYANMAR – THE extended detention of dozens of Rohingya men, women and children is raising new concerns from the international community about the treatment of the Muslim minority in Myanmar, and that government’s commitment to repatriate hundreds of thousands of refugees who have fled persecution.
Thirty Rohingya, including nine youths traveling in the group, were arrested on Sept. 26 in the country’s Ayeyarwady Region after arriving there by boat from Sittwe, the capital of Myanmar’s conflict-stricken Rakhine state, on their way to Yangon, the country’s commercial capital, according to local media reports.
A week later, a court sentenced the adults to two years in prison for breaking immigration laws for not carrying official papers, while the same court sentenced the children to a youth detention center south of Yangon. According to Human Rights Watch, a 5-year-old child was among those arrested and is currently being held in prison with his mother.
“Myanmar authorities seem intent on persecuting Rohingya whether they stay at home or try to travel freely in the country,” says Brad Adams, HRW’s Asia director. “These 30 men, women and children are being punished for simply seeking an escape from the daily brutality they’ve been subjected to for years.”
According to Radio Free Asia, the group told police they had paid thousands of dollars to traffickers to arrange for transportation to Yangon, where some intended to stay and work, while others planned to travel to Malaysia.
Government officials could not be reached for comment.
The case draws further attention to the treatment of the Rohingya minority inside Myanmar, who are denied access to citizenship and basic rights, and who the government refers to as “Bengalis,” implying they are interlopers from neighboring Bangladesh.
In the past two years, an estimated 700,000 Rohingya have fled northern Rakhine state for Bangladesh amid a brutal military crackdown that U.N. officials say amounts to ethnic cleansing, and possibly genocide.
However, there are still about 600,000 Rohingya remaining in Myanmar who face “systematic persecution and live under the threat of genocide,” according to the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission, which submitted its report in September. Most Rohingya inside Myanmar are confined to internally displaced persons camps or villages that they cannot leave without permission from authorities, and most do not have regular access to education, health care or livelihoods.
“The situation (for Rohingya) inside Myanmar is one of ongoing persecution, and the Myanmar government is using tools of oppression to persecute the Rohingya,” says John Quinley, a human rights specialist for Fortify Rights, a nonprofit human rights group based in Southeast Asia, adding that the Rohingya arrested should be “urgently released.”
Adds Quinley: “The Myanmar government should show they are serious about respecting rights by granting Rohingya freedom of movement, access to livelihoods, education, and restored citizenship rights.”
The development also comes as Myanmar’s government says it is pursuing plans to repatriate most of the Rohingya, who fled the country in 2017 amid international criticism of its handling of the crisis. Since early in 2018, both Myanmar and Bangladesh officials have said repatriation efforts would soon begin, only to then postpone the attempts. Only a handful of refugees have returned, with most refusing due to a lack of guarantees about their security and freedom of movement.
Brights Islam, a Rohingya who lives at a Rohingya refugee camp on the outskirts of Sittwe, says that the situation has not changed for many years for Rohingya living inside Myanmar.
“People are tired of living in this camp for eight years, when there are no job opportunities, proper health care or freedom of movement,” he says. “In the camp, which is an open prison, no one knows when this life will end. Young people are leaving the country to have a better life because they are trapped here.”