Treacherous path awaits Rohingya
teknaf, bangladesh — As far as the eye can see, they trudge through treacherously deep mud, across rice paddy fields and past rain-swollen creeks into Bangladesh.
Tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims, fleeing the latest round of violence to engulf their homes in Myanmar, have been walking for days or handing over their meager savings to Burmese and Bangladeshi smugglers to escape what they describe as certain death.
Exhausted mothers clutched listless infants. Catatonically terrified children clung to bone-weary fathers. Young children with blank eyes carried even younger siblings.
“Oh Allah, Oh Allah,” one family moaned as they waded Tuesday through the chin-high waters of the Naf River dividing the two countries. One panicking woman handed a 3-month-old infant to a taller man before she slipped momentarily beneath the murky water. For a terrifying moment, the man held the baby aloft with one hand as he steadied himself. Then as the woman remerged, the group moved on to the safety of Bangladesh on the opposite bank.
The Rohingya Muslim ethnic minority from Myanmar’s western Rakhine state has faced systematic persecution at the hands of the Buddhist majority for decades. The military junta that ruled the nation for decades stripped them of their citizenship. The democratically elected government under the leadership of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Aung San Suu Kyi has looked the other way as the Rohingya were pushed into squalid camps in their own home towns and villages.
For a people who have already lived through unimaginable horrors, including mass rapes and brutal killings decried by the United Nations, it seems as if the misery will never end.
Fresh horror was unleashed on August 25, when fighters of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army attacked government forces and prompted Myanmar soldiers to retaliate with “clearance operations” they say were aimed at flushing the insurgents out from Rohingya villages. The Myanmar government blames the insurgents for setting fire to their own homes and killing Buddhists in Rakhine.
The exhausted and starving refugees pouring into Bangladesh tell a different story: of targeted shootings by Myanmar troops; of warnings to leave their homes if they wanted to live. And so they left.
They abandoned all but what they could carry — a few kitchen utensils, a bag of rice, a tattered mattress.
On a mound of river clay, Dilara Begum sat, too exhausted to move as the half-naked son she cradled in one arm ran his tongue over his chapped lips. Two other children filled a plastic water bottle with the swirling brown river water and then each took small sips in turn. —
I went to rakhine two years ago as well, and they literally live in prisons covered in mud. It’s unacceptable for people to live under these conditions in this day and age.” Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkey’s Foreign Minister
myanmar had “already started defending all the people in rakhine in the best way possible” and warned against misinformation that could mar relations with other countries. “ Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar leader