Middleton journalist haunted by Rohingya refugee camp experience
Source : novanewsnow.comBy Paul Pickrem
The future is imaginary. We don’t know what will and will not come to our lives.
But, several months ago in Mae Sot, on the border of Thailand and Burma (Myanmar), during a conversation with a British woman who had recently returned from Burma, a dream was conceived in me that would lead me on a journey to a people and a place, both of which are known by hardly anyone.
But, I know them now. And, I can’t forget them.
I can’t mention the woman’s name, because she works illegally inside Burma and on its borders, as what some call a “fixer.” She helps Burmese inside the country and refugees in countless ways by connecting them with people and resources they need.
Before this, I saw media coverage, in February 2009, of allegations the Thai navy was caught arresting and abusing boat people from western Burma, who were trying to find new lives in other South East Asian countries. The Thais were accused of towing hundreds of them back out to sea in unsafe vessels, with little or no food and water and abandoning them, resulting in countless deaths.
These people were Rohingya, the Muslim minority in Burma’s Arakan State. They were fleeing from brutal ethnic and religious persecution and what they believe is the Burmese government’s systematic program of genocide against them.
I had heard of appalling conditions in Rohingya refugee camps in Burma and neighboring Bangladesh.
Now, my friend, the fixer, told me she had met with Rohingya journalists, in Bangladesh, who are working hard, with little training or resources, to tell the world about the desperate plight of their people.
That day, I decided I wanted to find a way, where there was no way, to go to Bangladesh and help these Rohingya journalists in any small way I could.
I had spent several months volunteering as an English teacher of migrant children and refugees in Mae Sot, so, I didn’t have the money to pay for a trip to Bangladesh. But, a few months later the means to pay for that journey presented itself.
I cannot divulge the details, but, my work with exiled Burmese journalists in South East Asia made it possible.
In late 2009, I was taken for a one-day visit to Kutupalong refugee camp in south eastern Bangladesh, near the Burma border.
STILL HAUNTED
Now, five months later, I am still haunted by what I saw and experienced.
Nearly forty-five thousand illegal refugees live like animals in an “unofficial” camp butted up against an “official” camp, under the supervision of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The difference is that “official” refugees have been granted refugee status, recognized by the Bangladesh government. They are in the country legally and have the advantage of support from the UN.
Refugees arriving after 1995 are not allowed to be granted official refugee status, according to the Bangladesh authorities.
That means they live in the country illegally, with no assistance from the UN in the form of food rations, health care, water, sanitation, or schools.
There are now more “unofficial” refugees than “official” and the squalid conditions they live in are an embarrassment to humanity.
There are now more than 40,000 Rohingya in the unofficial camp compared to more than 28,000 in the official one.
I have seen the desperate situations many refugees are forced to endure in three countries bordering Burma and have gotten to know many of them very well.
Being a refugee anywhere in this world is a grievous trauma. Being classed as “unofficial” or “illegal” is much worse.
FIVE-HOUR TREK
The photos I took , during a five-hour trek through the camp show the huts built out of mud, plastic, tree branches and scraps of garbage, including chunks of wood, metal, and discarded rice bags scavenged from ditches and garbage heaps.
The roofs are covered with thin plastic bought in rolls from nearby markets. It made me think of the plastic garbage bags we use at home to pick up leaves in the fall.
I tried to imagine those large families huddled under this thin plastic shield during the wind and pounding rain of the monsoons.
The next time I open a box of plastic garbage bags to pick up leaves I will be haunted by the faces of the thousands of refugees who live under it, year after year.
In one of the photos, the woman in yellow is Amina. She has five children. But, she is fortunate enough to have refugee status, which means she has shelter constructed from better materials, a food ration (which includes cooking oil, rice and charcoal for cooking), water, sanitation, and access to some medical care. The official camp has a school with Rohingya teachers trained by NGOs.
The woman beside her, in purple, is Hafiza. She has 10 children. Seven are married and she lives with three young daughters in the unofficial camp, who she supports by working as a domestic servant and sometimes by begging, since her husband died. Because she does not have refugee status, the family does not have a food ration, adequate medical care, or sanitation and they have to share access to a small number of wells spread around the camp. They live in a hut like you see in the photographs.
She recently said she hopes someday to return to Burma, but, with the same rights as all her neighbors.
SEEK WORK
Because the unofficial refugees have to survive without the support of the UN, hundreds of them leave the camp daily to seek work as laborers, domestics, cutting firewood or working in market stalls and tea rooms.
Kaladon Press, a Rohingya news agency, has reported children as young as seven leave the camp every morning to work full-time to help support their family, rather than go to school.
The bearded man in the photos is Nurul Salam. He and five family members arrived at Kutupalong in June 2009. He has tried to support them from the proceeds of a small shop.
“It’s difficult to live in this camp because I feel like an animal,” he said in a recent interview.
“All I want to do is provide some security for my family, like everyone everywhere.”
There have also been unconfirmed reports of deaths from starvation in the unofficial camp. But, Rohingya elders I spoke with said their priority is education.
They literally begged me to help them build schools in the camp and ask for assistance from the international community, so Rohingya children and young adults can get an education.
They believe this is crucial because it is illegal for Rohingya to be educated above 10th grade inside Arakan state. So, it is almost impossible for them to support themselves through well-paying jobs wherever they are forced to live, inside or outside of Burma.
This forces them to work menial jobs for very low pay. They are easily exploited because of this and their lack of legal status. They are very vulnerable to abuse and violent persecution.
SCHOOLS INADEQUATE
As you can see in the photos, schools in the unofficial camp are woefully inadequate. They consisted of some light gauge plastic stretched over a thin bamboo grid resting on bamboo poles and a dirt floor.
In the Annapolis Valley, most people I know would not keep their animals in such a place.
Money has been raised to build two schools, at a cost of around $400 USD each. But, they cannot have a solid roof, because the Bangla authorities say it would then constitute a permanent structure.
The Burmese military government and many of the Arakanese majority in Arakan State argue the Rohingya are not Burmese, but, were brought to Arakan by the British during the colonial period, which ended in 1948.
And, this is at the core of what haunts me the most about this situation.
The Rohingya are so easy to hate and to demonize. They are a different color. They are a Muslim minority, while the majority in Arakan is Buddhist. It is easy to brand all Rohingya as terrorists because some hold radical Islamic views. But, the largely moderate voice of Islam in the Rohingya community is not often mentioned. Their language and culture are very different. They are fiercely independent, proud and difficult to assimilate.
But, a young Rohingya man showed me a power point presentation, created by a UN consultant on the genocide in Rwanda. Wherever that presentation used the name Tutsis or the dominant Hutus, he substituted the word Rohingya or the majority Arakanese (also called Rakhine). He also changed the photos.
LIKE RWANDA
The similarities between the situations of the victimized Tutsis in Rwanda (thousands were reportedly slaughtered) and minority Rohingyas, in Arakan state, were eerily similar.
"They are painted as intruders and the enemy wherever they run. " - Paul Pickrem
Since my visit to Kutupalong, the security has deteriorated. There are reports of violent attacks on the camp, at night, by local Banglas, who strongly resent the presence of the refugees.
In communities near the Rohingya camps local residents are organizing to pressure their government to push the Rohingyas back across the border into Burma.
Human rights activists are concerned, because it is reported that most of the Rohingya driven back into Burma in a forced repatriation between 2003 and 2005 are dead, in jail, or back in Bangladesh.
Rohingya refugees are regularly arrested and money extorted from them. They are often robbed when returning to the camp from their jobs.
CAUGHT IN A VICE
So, Rohingyas are caught in a vice between a deadly snake and a hungry crocodile.
Critics are adamant they deserve their fate because they are not Burmese, they are not citizens of any country, they are different, they are radical Muslims we should fear and their presence is harmful because they won’t fit in. They are taking jobs, resources and land from poor locals.
They are painted as intruders and the enemy wherever they run.
But, I have thought often, since my time in Kutupalong, about the words of Friedrich Niemoller, a German Christian leader and anti-Nazi dissident in Germany during WW 2, which I read many years ago.
He related his experience when the authorities began to exterminate those so easy to demonize and hate in Germany and other countries controlled by the Nazis.
He said: “In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.”
WON’T STOP
I seriously doubt the Burmese military will stop their brutal and systematic campaign of extermination, once they have had their way with the Rohingya. The record of the regime since 1962 speaks otherwise.
I love and respect all peoples of Burma, of every ethnic and political stripe and I worry that other Burmese, who say and do nothing now, in the case of the Rohingya (some are accused of participating in the brutality), may someday find themselves in a camp like Kutupalong, clinging to life.
The fact is, the Rohingya, wherever one stands on the political and historical questions, are being exterminated by the common enemy of every freedom-loving citizen of Burma, from every people group - that being the brutal military regime that is squeezing the life out of the country.
Since Kotupalong, I have also thought of the ancient words of wisdom, ironically, attributed to Buddhist teaching: “Whenever you catch yourself making me and them distinctions, spend a moment being the other person. Find yourself in him or her. It may change your perspective.”
There are countless interpretations of the history and politics related to the Rohingya “problem.” I respect all the people and the various arguments on both sides of the issues. It’s very confusing to try and sift through it all.
However, when I have considered rhetoric urging that the Rohingya (and all the despised and marginal peoples everywhere) somehow deserve the tsunami of brutality crushing them, I go back to Kutupalong, in my memory, and find myself and the people I love in the Rohingya faces that haunt me.
It does change my perspective.
More information about my experiences on the Burma border is available at pspickrem@hotmail.com or on my Facebook profile.
(Paul Pickrem is an award-winning freelance writer from Middleton and a former writer for The Annapolis County Spectator.)
