Muslim refugees vow to stay in ill-defined border limbo
ALONG THE BANGLADESH-MYANMAR BORDER — From their home, a tent hastily erected in a grassy field, the young Muslim Rohingya couple can see the village they left behind last year, fleeing attacks by Buddhist mobs and Myanmar security forces.
They arrived in a no-man’sland, one of the small, poorly defined areas that exist at the cloudiest edges of the borderlands, places that seem to be neither Myanmar nor Bangladesh. While most Rohingya refugees who crossed the border have sought protection in the immense camps a few miles deeper into Bangladesh, these people say they will go no farther.
“My ancestors’ graves are there,” said Abdul Naser, gesturing toward his village, less than 100 yards away. “Sometimes, I walk close to the barbed wire fence and touch my land, and I cry in the dark.”
But a few weeks ago, things changed. Myanmar deployed more soldiers to the border, some of whom began coming to within steps of the refugees’ homes. They have set up speakers that blare announcements, insisting people go farther into Bangladesh.
Because to Myanmar, noman’s-land doesn’t exist at all.
“We cannot accept the term ‘no-man’s-land’ because that is our land,” said Nyan Myint Kyaw, Myanmar’s deputy commander of the border police. Shifting rivers may have washed away some border markers, he says, and fences may not have been erected everywhere. But he insists the 6,000 or so Rohingya who think they live between the two countries are actually living inside Myanmar.
Myanmar says additional soldiers were deployed to stop possible cross-border attacks by Rohingya militants, though no such attacks are known to have occurred. When Bangladesh protested the deployments, Myanmar dismissed their complaints.
“This is not like we are trying to invade Bangladesh,” Myanmar spokesman Zaw Htay said in early March.
The Rohingya have long lived at the ragged fringes of life in Myanmar, denied citizenship and many of the most basic rights. They are derided as “Bengalis,” and many in Myanmar believe they are illegal migrants from Bangladesh.
The most recent problems began in August, when Rohingya insurgents launched a series of unprecedented attacks on Myanmar security posts. Myanmar responded with overwhelming force, burning Muslim villages with the help of Buddhist mobs, raping women, looting homes and carrying out massacres. Some 700,000 Rohingya fled the attacks into Bangladesh. Aid groups say more than 6,700 people were killed.