ROHINGYA’S HOME WITHOUT HOPE
Exclusive dispatch from the world’s biggest refugee camp, where traumatised ‘inmates’ fear a return to Myanmar
Chut Pyin was once called the Village of Bitter Gourds for the vegetables its residents grew. The lush fields around their homes in northern Rakhine state also produced a profusion of rice, pumpkins and okra.
But last year, the rice paddies of Chut Pyin became killing fields as Myanmar soldiers and Buddhist extremists carried out a brutal massacre of the Rohingya villagers.
On August 26, almost 400 of the ethnic Muslims were killed and the village razed, while those who survived fled on foot across the border into neighbouring Bangladesh.
The bitter gourds of Chut Pyin were supplanted by bitter memories for the more than 1,000 people to whom that bountiful home is just a memory.
Twelve months later, the villagers live in a tight cluster of tarpaulin and bamboo huts on top of a small hillock in the Kutupalong-Balukhali Refugee Camp.
“You won’t find anyone around here who didn’t lose at least one family member,” says Mohammed Sadiq, a grey-haired farmer in a white skull cap, whose granddaughter and daughter-in-law were killed. Of the 1,400 Rohingya who lived in Chut Pyin, 358 were killed and 94 wounded, says Ahammed Hossain, once the village foreman.
Mr Hossain, a boyish 25-yearold who wears a T-shirt with the white sign of the Hollywood hills, says another 59 men were detained by Myanmar soldiers and have not been released.
At least 19 women were raped. He recounts how he found his own sister dying in the bushes after being raped and shot.
“I couldn’t save her,” Mr Hossain says flatly.
His father and brother were also killed, he says, with the numbness of loss palpable in his voice.
The massacre at Chut Pyin, which has been documented and corroborated by international rights groups, became the most notorious example of the Myanmar government’s campaign to remove the ethnic minority Rohingya and begin a mass migration of refugees into Bangladesh.
Today, as Bangladesh and Myanmar discuss the return of refugees, the villagers of Chut Pyin hold up their experience as evidence of why greater international involvement is needed to protect the rights of Rohingya Muslims.
An investigation by Physicians for Human Rights in Boston, published last month, concluded that “the savagery inflicted on the people of Chut Pyin is a typical example of the widespread and systematic campaign the Myanmar authorities have waged against the Rohingya – acts that should be investigated as crimes against humanity”.
Before last year’s bloodshed, communal hatred had been simmering for decades in Rakhine, where ethnic Rohingya Muslims lived alongside Buddhists.
Myanmar’s Buddhists, who form almost 90 per cent of the population, feared that the Muslims could usurp them. That led to their portrayal as Bengali interlopers living illegally in the country.
About 120,000 Rohingya already lived in guarded displacement camps inside Myanmar and another 400,000 in exile in Bangladesh.
The massacre at Chut Pyin came directly after a rag-tag Rohingya militant group called the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army carried out attacks on Myanmar border guards.
Afterwards, the Myanmar government said the deaths at Chut Pyin and elsewhere were part of counter-terrorism operations.
Over following months about 700,000 Rohingya fled across the border in what the then UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein called “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.
In such a densely populated, low-lying country as Bangladesh, the only land available for the Rohingya to shelter was a national forest, a south-eastern landscape of low hills and meandering waterways abutting verdant paddies.
The camps sprung up haphazardly, with aid agencies struggling to install sanitation and drainage and warning against the risk of extensive outbreaks of disease.
A year on, though, what was jungle is now a “mega-camp”, the world’s largest refugee settlement.
A sprawling site that stretches for miles, the camp consists of tight rows of huts jostling for space along the contours of the hillsides.
Paths are swept clean, huts kept trim, and tiny vegetable allotments planted on any level metre of bare ground.
Informal markets have sprung up along the roads, where industrious men sell dried fish, vegetables and neat bundles of firewood, each stick cut to the same length.
Amid their desperate situation, children remain children, playing under the well pumps and with toy cars crafted from discarded plastic and sticks.
But with every monsoon rain, the sandy soil of the hillsides slowly subsides, making homes collapse and destroying paths. Work crews dig continually to terrace and stabilise hillsides.
When cyclone winds blow, roofs fly off huts. Keeping the latrines sanitary and the water from pooling takes constant work.
The villagers of Chut Pyin somehow stoically ward off despair, but as time passes their situation is becoming more desperate.
Their movement outside the camp is restricted and they cannot work legally. Children are not allowed to be formally taught in the Myanmar or Bangladeshi curriculums.
As such, life is on hold. A sense of alienation has grown out of their lack of acknowledged status.
While the Bangladesh government has welcomed the refugees, it remains acutely sensitive to the idea of Rohingya being given any permanent right to remain.
The Myanmar government has thus far refuged to recognise them as an ethnic group.
As a result, in the camps they are identified neither as refugees nor Rohingya. UN-issued ID cards identify them as “forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals”.
In talks, which have not included the Rohingya, the Bangladeshi and Myanmar governments have agreed that repatriation should be done in a voluntary, safe and dignified manner.
But without guarantees of citizenship and international protection, most Rohingya say they are unwilling to return.
“Our future depends now on the international community,” says Mohammed Rafiq, 23, a farmer left lame by a bullet wound.
“I want citizenship rights and I want our security guaranteed. When we get this we will go home.”
After all that they have been through, being left in limbo could be the cruellest blow.
Salim Ullah, 26, ran from his home when the soldiers came to the village.
When they saw him flee, they fired.
“After I was shot I hid from the soldiers in a cesspool. I saw them with our women, doing whatever they wanted.
“We lost everything then,” he says. “But now we’re losing hope too.”
I want citizenship rights and I want our security guaranteed. When we get this, then we will go home MOHAMMED RAFIQ Kutupalong-Balukhali Refugee Camp