‘Death is better than returning to Burma’

ROHINGYA refugees in Bangladesh said yesterday they would “rather die” than go back to Burma under current conditions, as it was revealed that plans to repatriate them have stalled.

“We will not return without being given our rights as citizens,” said Mohamad Saddiq Hossain, a local community leader in Kutupalong extension camp. “We would rather die here than be taken back there.”

Mr Hossain’s feelings were shared by many of the camp’s Rohingya residents, who have spent the past week fearing that they could be forced back to the country that 720,000 fled in 2017.

Last Tuesday, Bangladesh’s government was due to send back the first of 2,200 refugees to Burma from the south of Bangladesh, but the process stopped amid protests.

Many of those on the list approved by the Burma government fled from their shelters and hid in other camps or in the forest.

Abul Kalam, Bangladesh’s refugee relief and repatriation commissioner, told Reuters yesterday “a new course of action” needed to be adopted on repatriation that took into account refugees’ demands.

Rahin Ullah, a Rohingya refugee believed to be about 50 years old, who fled Burma last August for the third time, said he wanted to go home but would not do so until there was an end to discrimination against his people.

Highlighting the volatile conditions in Burma, four Rohingya were shot and injured in a raid by immigration authorities on an internal displacement camp outside the city of Sittwee yesterday.

With Bangladesh set to go to the polls on Dec 30, any decision either to repatriate people or relocate refugees from the crowded camps to Bangladesh’s Bhasan Char island will not proceed until 2019, Mr Kalam said.

Many Bangladeshis feel their overpopulated country should not be bearing the burden of an extra million people in one of its poorest regions.

Rohingya like Mr Hossain have little choice. “Here in Bangladesh we have nothing,” he says. “But it is better than returning.”