Couple stuck in Myanmar recall horror
BANGKOK: Thailand faced mounting calls to stop pushing migrants back out to sea amid fears an exodus of Rohingya from Myanmar could spark a new wave of boatpeople.
Fighting in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state has forced about half a million Rohingya to seek refuge in neighbouring Bangladesh, prompting concerns they could be targeted by smugglers and human traffickers.
Neighbouring Thailand was a popular transit route by boat and land until a 2015 Thai police crackdown led to ships full of migrants being abandoned at sea.
“Thailand urgently needs to set a regional example by adopting humane refugee policies,” said Audrey Gaughran from Amnesty International as the group released a report accusing Thai authorities of failing to protect refugees.
Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha said last month his government is “preparing to receive” people fleeing Myanmar and send them back “when they are ready”.
But the Internal Security Operations Command, a military unit dealing with national security, recently said it would continue to prevent refugees from entering Thailand. — Reuters
BALUKHALI (Bangladesh):
When their nine children fled to Bangladesh to escape recent violence and persecution in Myanmar, a Rohingya Muslim couple made the tough decision to stay behind. They did not want to leave their land or the grocery store they ran in their village.
Sultan Mehmood, 62, also faced another obstacle in fleeing – he had lost the lower half of his right leg two years earlier when a Myanmar soldier shot him, he says.
Their decision to stay behind when soldiers invaded their village in late August left them open to further attack.
Mehmood, now in Bangladesh, says his wife was raped by three of the soldiers and he was badly beaten.
“The soldiers did a nasty thing with my wife. They did a wrong thing with her,” he said, sighing deeply as his 45-year-old wife, Haseena Begum, sat silently nearby on the floor of a makeshift hut in the Balukhali refugee camp in Bangladesh.
Nearly a week later, one of their sons returned to Myanmar to help guide them over the border to Balukhali, where the rest of the family had found shelter in one of the many refugee settlements that have been pushed beyond capacity as Bangladesh struggles to absorb the influx of Rohingya.
The refugees say Buddhist mobs and Myanmar soldiers set entire villages on fire, shot at villagers indiscriminately and raped women. The UN human rights chief has called the attacks “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”. — AP
Mehmood and his wife Haseena sitting at their shelter, pondering on their future, near the Balukhali refugee camp.
— AP