For Rohingya refugees, there’s no place called home

BANGKOK — Ms Meenah cannot remember her precise birthplace in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. Based on descriptions she has heard of the place, she imagines it was a peaceful village surrounded by greenery.

But that picture hardly reflects the state of affairs in Rakhine in recent weeks, with hundreds of deaths and 370,000 stateless Rohingya refugees fleeing into Bangladesh recorded from Aug 25 to Sept 12, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates.

When she was four months old, Ms Meenah, who goes by one name, was taken by her mother alongside three of her siblings on a boat leaving the Bay of Bengal for Malaysia. The trip was organised by a broker who promised that they would be able to build new lives abroad.

STATELESS IN MYANMAR

It was 1983, one year after General Ne Win’s government enacted a law that did not recognise Rohingya as one of Burma’s national races. As a result, the Rohingya were denied Burmese citizenship.

At that point, Burma had endured several decades of political turmoil under junta governments. A series of student protests had been held against the regime’s violence and economic failure.

In the junta’s crackdown on dissidents, the army arrested Ms Meenah’s father, accusing him of organising student protests. His whereabouts are still unknown.

Devastated by her husband’s disappearance and fearful of discrimination against Rohingya, Ms Meenah’s mother decided to take her children away from Rakhine.

“(My mother) told me what happened at the time,” Ms Meenah, now 34, recalled. “It sounded just like the turmoil in present-day Rakhine. Houses were burned. People were killed and hurt.”

STATELESS IN THAILAND

But the promise of starting a new chapter in a foreign land withered upon arrival. Instead of arriving in Malaysia, the boat took Ms Meenah’s family to Thailand. There, they were sold to a criminal gang who forced them to beg on the streets of Bangkok.

Ms Meenah’s mother was forced to take her daughter along with her to work for the gang. Meanwhile, Ms Meenah’s elder sister, Fatimah, four years old at the time, begged on a different street. At night, they ate and slept under the supervision of the gang.

In 1991, the police raided the house and arrested the gang. Ms Meenah’s family were freed, but they still could not return to Myanmar.

The military junta launched a systematic crackdown on the Rohingya the same year that Ms Meenah was freed, forcing 250,000 refugees to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh.

The renewed violence followed the peak of the pro-democracy student protests, known as the 8888 Uprising. The junta proceeded to impose martial law that allows its officials to conduct raids and arrest people — in many cases without solid proof of any wrongdoing.

With no home to return to, Ms Meenah’s family have stayed on in Thailand since then as undocumented people, which means they have no guarantee of any basic rights. They earn a meagre living, selling cheap commodities like roses and chewing gum.

“We are the lost causes of the war,” she said. “No one wants to flee home if it’s a peaceful place. But when a house is in flames, you need to find water somewhere else.”

Ms Meenah’s mother and two siblings have since passed away, but the war continues to have an effect on the third generation of the migrant family.

Ms Meenah’s two children, now enrolled in primary school, were born in Thailand but have yet to gain Thai citizenship. The same goes for the children of Fatimah, now 40. One of her children, aged 20, was rejected by employers due to his stateless status.

Other Rohingya from her old community have suffered a similar fate — living in the shadows of public life, shut out of the motherland.

As the Rohingya refugee count continues to rise, it seems like future generations will continue to be cycled into states of despair.

CYCLE OF VIOLENCE

Violence first broke out on Aug 25 after the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (Arsa), a Rakhine state insurgent group, attacked police border posts, according to the Myanmar government.

Security officials retaliated brutally, with soldiers reportedly firing indiscriminately at unarmed Rohingya, including women and children, while destroying homes and executing arson attacks.

There is concern now that the influx of refugees may spell security risks for receiving countries. On Sept 7, Bangladesh reported that soldiers from Myanmar had begun planting landmines along the shared border, the route used often for those returning to Myanmar. The move means that Rohingya refugees will be at heightened risk when they cross the border back home, even if the violent conflict eventually subsides.

Furthermore, the renewed suppression has prompted desperate Rohingya refugees to go further south to Malaysia.

The renewed violence forced thousands of Rohingya to board overcrowded boats to Malaysia or even further south. But some boats ended up in Thailand instead.

In 2015, it also became clear that human traffickers was playing a significant role in facilitating mass refugee arrivals in neighbouring countries, exploiting their need for a new home.

In May 2015, a joint military-police taskforce discovered over 30 bodies at an abandoned human trafficking camp in Sadao district, Songkhla, near the Thai-Malaysian border.

The camp was used by traffickers to detain refugees who were expected to make a ransom payment before being smuggled back into Malaysia.

The discovery of the camp sharply undermined any Thai government claims that the United States State Department’s downgrading of Thailand on their Trafficking in Persons Report from 2014 to a Tier Three country, the lowest rank indicating a failure to combat human trafficking, was to be doubted.

The incident led to the trials of over 100 people facing human trafficking charges. Among them were government officials and former Thai general Manas Kongpan, who was sentenced to 27 years in jail.

But life has not improved for the victims. Many refugees remain detained in different authorities’ facilities.

“Many (Rohingya refugees) are still in detention after the verdicts were given to traffickers,” said Mr Surapong Kongchantuk, a human rights lawyer who provides legal assistance to ethnic minorities.

“This shows that the Thai government hasn’t taken any clear measures to solve their (stateless) status.”

These Rohingya are likely to stay in detention for years to come, many of whom arrived in Thailand before 2015 and were charged with illegal entry to the country.

When the Thai government began looking into building facilities for them, residents protested. Some insisted that Thailand “should not intervene in Myanmar’s affairs”.

MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

The worst might be yet to come for Ms Meenah and her family, with the Thai government’s new migrant labour law putting them in a tough spot.

The law introduces harsher penalties, from imprisonment to heavy fines, for undocumented migrants, as well as fines for employers who hire illegal migrants. The law has triggered a mass migrant exodus since it came into effect in June.

This led the government to declare a six-month indulgence period to give migrant workers time to process their identity documents in their country of origin. They could then use these documents to apply for legal status and work permits in Thailand.

But this procedure does not work in the case of undocumented Rohingya workers — unrecognised as citizens in their native Myanmar, they could not go back home.

Saddled with fear of facing the penalties, some landlords have urged their Rohingya tenants to leave their rented homes before the end of the indulgence period.

Ms Fatimah’s family have been given a deadline to leave before the end of the month.

“I can’t track down my relatives in Rakhine,” she said. “With the conflict escalating recently, it’s impossible to request the help of Burmese officials.

“As I was taken to Thailand in early childhood, I can’t communicate in Burmese, which has made it even harder for me to be accepted by the Myanmar government.”

Ms Fatimah’s future seems increasingly bleak, with limited options for legal recognition.

Rohingya who arrived in Thailand 30 years ago have “ethnic status”, meaning they can stay in Thailand temporarily, although they have no official citizenship or legal status. Their children can apply for Thai citizenship, but they are not always granted it.

HOME, VIRTUALLY

Some suspect that they are rejected due to discrimination.

In the early 2000s, the Thai government opened calls to let Rohingya apply for stateless status, meaning they could stay in Thailand while awaiting completion of their nationality verification process. However, the call for applications was only open for a limited time. Refugees who arrived after 2012 have since struggled to obtain status.

When asked about cases of Rohingya being denied nationality verification, the Myanmar embassy in Thailand did not reply by press time. A Rohingya whose family had escaped Myanmar, Mr Kasim, 33, describes the life of a refugee outside the motherland well.

“Any migrants, when having problems, can go to their respective embassy,” he said. “When they leave, they have a home to return to. If they want to come back, they can come with a government memorandum of understanding for recruiting migrant workers. But Rohingya have none of this. They are left in the middle of nowhere. We have such an unlikely chance of getting help.”

Last month, during Eid al-Adha, Mr Kasim and his friends gathered to donate meat to Rohingya community members in a Bangkok suburb. It is a special time of year for Muslims to make merit and mingle with family members. Mr Kasim can only convey his sympathy from afar for the conflict still raging at home.

His father, from Maungdaw township, saw much of this violence firs thand.

Several of Mr Kasim’s friends, children of Rohingya migrants, still have no legal status. Some remain connected with relatives in Rakhine state by conversing on online video calls.

Another Rohingya community member shows off a photo of his mother still in the conflict zone, too old to flee on foot.

“Sometimes I don’t want to be called a Rohingya,” a young Rohingya woman said during the feast. “Because people with this ethnic name are treated badly. “But I am a Rohingya. I can’t change (that) fact.” BANGKOK POST