Clinging to hope
As monsoon season approaches, new challenges face the huge Rohingya refugee population and those caring for them in Bangladesh. Story and photos by Erich Parpart in Dhaka and Cox’s Bazar
They have survived many challenges, from a genocide that killed nearly 3 million of their people, the ultimate fight for freedom from Pakistan, a series of coups since independence in 1971, and the assassination of the Father of the Nation, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. But the people of Bangladesh still find it in their hearts to help those even less fortunate than themselves, in this case hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees.
“If needed, we will eat a full meal once a day and share the rest with them,” Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was quoted as saying by the Indian news outlet Firstpost in October last year.
But the South Asian country cannot bear the burden alone, given the huge scale of the exodus from Rakhine state in Myanmar. With the arrival of the monsoon season, the challenge is becoming even more daunting.
Between 800,000 and one million Muslim Rohingya have been driven from their homes by the Myanmar military since it began “clearance” operations following a series of attacks on security posts in Rakhine in late 2016. Stories of rape, torture and murder have emerged to bolster claims by rights groups worldwide that Myanmar is engaged in “ethnic cleansing”.
The Rohingya began fleeing Rakhine by the tens of thousands in August last year and seemingly endless lines of new arrivals waiting to register can still be seen at the Kutupalong camp in Cox’s Bazar. It is one of 23 camps that collectively form the single largest concentration of refugees on the planet today. The Kutupalong camp alone houses more than 600,000 people.
The early refugees are now living along the entrance to the camps on a fairly level plain in shanty houses made from aluminium sheets and scrap wood from larger construction projects. They are better sheltered and more prepared for the monsoon than the newcomers but their living conditions are still dire.
The latest arrivals are now waiting for shacks of bamboo poles and tarpaulins to be constructed on rolling, almost moonlike terrain. This ocean of makeshift tents and shacks on a hillside that stretches to the horizon is at high risk of being washed away in a heavy rain, but it is the only place available to those seeking to escape the violence back home.
“Our people are being tortured and killed and our women are being raped. … I want to go home but I do not want my family to be killed,” Hamid Hossain, 25, told Asia Focus.
He managed to bring his entire family of six — including his father and mother, his wife and two sons — to Cox’s Bazar six months ago. Mr Hossain was working as a porter at a construction site when he was living in Rakhine. He now works a 12-hour shift as a porter for 250 taka (less than US$3) per day, about the same as he earned in an eight-hour shift back home.
Other refugees who managed to escape with their savings are now opening various kinds of small shops, mostly selling food and sanitary products, to trade with local residents as well as other refugees.
The emergence in less than one year of a camp with one million people has created a new dynamic and completely upended the local economy in an area that had a population of less than 600,000 people previously. The reputation of Cox’s Bazar as a tourist destination has taken a severe hit, as a new road alongside the world’s longest unbroken beach now leads to the refugee camps.
Nevertheless, the local population and the Rohingya are finding ways to coexist, with trading activity between locals and refugees taking place at the security entrance to the camp where local rickshaws come and go.
“They (NGOs and Bangladeshis) are doing enough for us and God bless them for that,” said Mr Hossain.
Registered Rohingya refugees are free to roam around Cox’s Bazar because they are not confined or forced to stay at the camp, but most have chosen to stay in the camps where they are eligible for free food and medicine if they are registered with the Office of the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commission (RRRC).
MONSOON PREPARATION
The RRRC — Triple-RC as it’s known locally — was launched in October 2017 with the support of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). It has about 100 staff who are collecting information on newly arrived refugee families and issuing cards with unique identification numbers. The data gathered helps staff to identify vulnerabilities and specific needs among the refugee population in order to provide better assistance. So far, 700,000 have been counted in the first phase and the process is ongoing.
“After the influx, people were coming in and they were scattered in different places. The government of Bangladesh decided that this cannot be done because it could led to various problems so there should be some place where we can put them together in order for us to address their needs,” said Shamimul Huq Pavel, an RRRC camp director at Kutupalong.
“The current population density is around 70,000 per square kilometre and everyone is living in a one-storey building.”
At first, he recalled, different zones were labelled in alphabetical order. But as the numbers swelled, workers ran out of English letters and adopted numerals. The 23 camps are being expanded to 30 with new ones on more level ground and farther inland in preparation for the monsoon and new flows of refugees.
“The main job of Triple-RC is to coordinate between all the actors here including international NGOs, Bangladeshis NGOs and other agencies who have come,” said Mr Pavel. “We coordinate all of their resources so that they can be streamlined and the beneficiaries can have better service.”
Besides smartphones, the main coordinators within each camp also have walkie-talkies and satellite phones to contact each other. Reliable communication will be essential when the monsoon hits.
“We have weekly coordination meetings including discussions of distribution and the services we provide,” said Mr Pavel. “At first, many agencies were bringing things that the refugees did not know what to do with. They had to explain how to use them, such as milk powder which some refugees mistook for detergent and they were washing their clothes with it.”
I want to go home but I do not want my family to be killed HAMID HOSSAIN Camp resident
His biggest fear was that the reverse could happen, and some refugees might mistake detergent for milk powder and use it to feed their children.
NGOs are trying to provide liveable conditions before the refugees can be repatriated, but the main thing they are trying to do is to “give them hope back”, he said.
“Hope and belief, that is the most important thing. … We have to give them their belief and self-respect back because these are things that cannot be taken away from them completely.”
Mr Pavel said that most if not all of the Rohingya want to go back to Rakhine where they have roots dating back centuries. “They want to go home, but they don’t want to be killed.”
Rahamantunla, 50, another Rohingya refugee, said he and his peers need guarantees of safety above all else.
“We are surviving with the help of the Bangladeshi government and the NGOs and we will return only if our rights are recognised by the Myanmar government,” he told Asia Focus. “As citizens, we want our voting rights and only then we will return. Otherwise we do not want to return to that insecure land.”
Rohingya elders representing 40 villages from Rakhine have underlined their demands in a document, handwritten in Burmese, saying that no one will return to Myanmar unless the demands were met.
Other demands are for UN peacekeepers to provide them with safe passage back, for the Myanmar government to compensate them for everything they have lost including cultivated land and homes that were bulldozed and razed, and for mosques and schools to be rebuilt. They want the military personnel who were responsible for killings, looting and rape prosecuted, and the release from jail of any “innocent Rohingya” who were picked up during counter-insurgency operations.
The Myanmar government in January made a rare admission that its soldiers killed 10 captured “terrorists” following insurgent attacks at the beginning of September after local Buddhist residents had forced the captured men into a mass grave that the villagers had dug.
The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (Arsa), an insurgent group in the region, said the 10 men in the mass grave were “innocent civilians” and not their members.
Many observers fear that the refugee camps could become a breeding ground for terrorism, given t he resentment and anger against the Myanmar military. But Mr Pavel says he has seen no such evidence in the six months he has been in the area. Law and order is being maintained by Bangladeshi authorities, the same as everywhere else in the country.
Foreign Minister Abdul Hassan Mahmud Ali says the country is keeping “a close watch” on security issues within the camps but so far he has not heard of any concerns or seen any signs of terrorist presence.
He told Asia Focus that “things seem to be moving” in regard to the repatriation process but the current struggle for power within Myanmar between the military and civilian government still poses a challenge, while the immediate concern is the monsoon.
Dhaka is considering shifting around 100,000 refugees to some new islands in the Bay of Bengal where the infrastructure can better withstand the monsoon winds. These sites have been used before to shelter residents of villages vulnerable to heavy storms.
“To start with we are thinking of moving around 100,000 people and we are starting to build some more concrete cyclone shelters there already,” the minister said. “We will arrange for food and water for them. Their lives will be protected and they can even bring their cattle to stay under these houses which are used as primary schools and community clinics in normal times but have multiple uses.”
Humanitarian workers in 2015 criticised the use of the floodprone islands that only emerged from the silt of the delta coast 11 years ago, but given that the country is one of the poorest and most crowded in the world, they are the best it can offer right now.
In any case, hopes for the repatriation process look dim despite assurances offered by Myanmar about the safety of the “camps” it has created in Rakhine. The last influx of Rohingya refugees happened in 1971 and fewer than half were returned.
Helping Bangladesh to help the Rohingya survive the monsoon is probably the best hope the international community can offer the refugees for the time being.