The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
‘We don’t want to go to Bangladesh or Pak, both are equally violent. We are fine here’
HEAVILY PREGNANT, Taslima fled Prangla village in Rakhine in Myanmar one damp August afternoon in 2010, haunted by the “murder” of a close friend. All 11 family members were huddled together uncomfortably in the back of a jeep, she remembers. “My two-year-old daughter wouldn’t stop crying.”
The family had sold all its belongings for Rs 6 lakh. “If we had stayed back, we would have been killed,” Taslima says.
Now 25 and the mother of four, the youngest of them nine-months-old, Taslima lives in a shanty made of bamboo sticks, with tarpaulin sheets stretched over them, in Camp No. 2 of Haryana’s Mewat district, over 3,000 km from home.
There are six Rohingya camps in the district, all within a 1-km radius, set up on state government land. Taslima’s camp is the largest, with 108 families (327 people).
Taslima says they faced constant torture in Myanmar. Then, they killed her friend. “I just couldn’t live there anymore,” Taslima says. “From our village we took a jeep to Mundu,fourhoursaway.thejourneycostus Rs 5,000. We waited in Mundu till midnight, andthentookaboattoteknupinbangladesh. Itwasatwo-hourjourneyonasmallboatthat costusrs10,000perperson.wehadheardof security personnel in Bangladesh shooting down Rohingyas the moment they got off boats, but fortunately that night there were none. I remember praying the entire time,” she says in broken Hindi.
The family, including her husband Mohammad Noor, 30, stayed in a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh for two years.“itwashell.therewasnoelectricity,no water, and hot all the time. Here we have some semblance of a home,” she says.
To leave for India, the men worked as daily wagers for a month in Cox’s Bazar. “We collected Rs 40,000, crossed the Ichamati river on boat and arrived at Basirhat in West Bengal, paying Rs 1,300 per person. But the moment we arrived, police caught us. We had to give them all our money, around Rs 25,000. When we reached Sitapur railway station near Kolkata, we again had no money. We begged on the platform for two days and bought tickets to Delhi,” says Taslima.
Mohammad Naseem, 41, Taslima’s relativeand‘ zimmedar (in-charge)’ of Camp No. 2 that has 50 huts, says the first few days were a nightmare, as they didn't know anybody in Delhi or the language. “Somehow we reached the UNHCR office.”
After getting their refugee cards, the family settled in Mewat. “I also made a trip to Jammu, where I had heard there were many Rohingyas. I stayed there for eight months but couldn’t find a permanent job,” says Naseem.
At Camp No. 2, there is Rohima, who was sold to a Muslim farmer in Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur after being brought to India by a dalaal (agent) with six other girls. The 25-year-old now stays with two young children and begs for a living.
Then there is Dil Nahar Begum, 51, who lost her son and daughter-in-law after their boat overturned on way to Bangladesh. And Hasrat Miya who reportedly became deaf in one ear after being thrashed by a guard in a camp in Bangladesh.
Earning a living continues to be tough. “No one is ready to give us a job, they all ask for Aadhaar cards. We have been working as daily wagers in Sohna and Gurgaon, and barely make Rs 300 a day. Some members of the Jamaat-e-islami group had visited us in Myanmar and told us that life in Mewat will be good. That there is no discrimination between Hindus and Muslims and we will earn good money. But we can’t do anything without citizenship,” says Sona Miya, 30, a father of four, who claims to have been among the first to arrive in Mewat.
Electricity supply to the camps is erratic and there are just two toilets per camp. “The men and children go to the fields to relieve MEWAT themselves,” says Miya, holding his twoyear-old son in his arms.
Last year, the government school in Nuh allowed admission to 35 children from the camps after several protests. “We don't even get SIM cards with the UN card. There are just five phones with connections in the entire camp, which some locals got us,” Miya says.
Like many others at the camp, Miya too wants to shift to Delhi. “There are more jobs there... Last year in May someone told us about an empty plot in Jaffrabad (northeast Delhi) where we could settle. So 20 of us went there and started pitching tents. But in the night, over 10 policemen came, thrashed us and sent us back,” he says. “We will try again in the summer.”
Taslima says she is in no hurry to go anywhere. “We don’t want to go back to Bangladesh or move to Pakistan, like some Rohingyas have. Both countries are equally violent. We are better off here, we are free and alive. We don’t even have to wear burqas. I like wearing salwar-kameez.”