Dhaka, Jan. 18 (EFE). Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh on Wednesday demanded that they be repatriated to Burma (Myanmar) with their full rights as the only viable solution, in response to a report published the day before by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in which it warned that at least 348 members of this minority had died. The year is 2022 as they cross the sea in search of a better future.
The vast majority of those flights departed from Bangladesh, which is home to some 925,000 Rohingya refugees who have fled since the Burmese army began operations in 2017, and live in crowded refugee camps with few rights.
“It’s been five years since they’ve been here. Day by day, things are getting tighter. They have no financial independence and less aid. There is no access to formal education. They think they have no future. Their lives are stagnant. That’s why many of them are in this danger.” Rohingya activist Rizia Sultana told EFE.
“They think they will die here or there. Until they are sent back to Myanmar, they will continue to believe that life elsewhere is better,” he added.
In addition to the deaths of 348 Rohingyas on these dangerous journeys of thousands of kilometres, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has reported a significant increase in the number of people making these journeys, up from nearly 700 refugees in 2021 to over 3,500. last year.
“prison”
Hatamunsa and her five-year-old daughter, Umm Salima, were Rohingya refugees who took one of these long sea journeys last year, on one of the many boats, crowded and flimsy.
“They embarked on the journey knowing the risks because there was no life for the Rohingya here. It is an open-air prison for us. We need to go back to Myanmar with full rights or resettle in a third country for a better life.” EFE told his brother, Ruzuwan Khan.
The two began the journey last November, she recalls, after spending more than five years in a refugee camp, where Hatamunsa arrived after her husband abandoned her in Myanmar in 2016.
After paying a smuggler 100,000 taka (about $1,000), he “embarked on a boat trip to Malaysia with 180 other people, mostly Rohingya,” but their boat got stranded at sea after a few days, Khan continued.
“The smugglers at first didn’t tell us anything. They tried to solve the issue themselves. But when things got out of hand, they informed us on December 4 to bring it to the attention of the international community,” he said.
It took Hatamunsa and her daughter a month to disembark on the Indonesian coast, with prior permission from the authorities, accompanied by more than a hundred Rohingya refugees like themselves.
There were already far fewer on board, Khan said, after 26 people drowned when they jumped into the sea in the hope that one of the ships that passed along the way would rescue them.
Human Rights Watch has reiterated that the best way to stop these types of desperate journeys is to begin returning them safely to Burma as soon as possible.
However, the two attempts made so far to allow the return of Rohingya refugees to Myanmar have failed because members of this ethnic minority have refused to return without guarantees of citizenship and security.
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