Santa Gaha Magar in Himal Khabarpatrika, 03/01/2016
Burma’s persecuted Rohingya Muslim refugees have been taking flimsy boats across the Bay of Bengal to the coasts of Thailand and Malaysia since 2012, but a few have ventured north in a perilous overland journey through Bangladesh and India to enter Nepal.
While thousands have been abandoned and perished at sea, in Nepal the 160 Rohingyas face a bitter winter in shelters in Kathmandu and humanitarian agencies that are running out of money to look after them.
The UNHCR is to stop providing a subsistence allowance to the Rohingya from December, saying it has run out of money because of refugee crises in other parts of the world. The ‘boat people’ who fled anti-Muslim violence in Burma are now fighting yet another battle for survival in Nepal.
The refugees have been on sit-in protests in front of the UN agency’s office in Maharajganj since October, and they have been repeatedly chased away with batons by the Nepal Police. Now, four Rohingya youth have started a hunger strike from 1 December. They want their allowances until they get a chance to be resettled.
he UNHCR had been providing monthly allowances of Rs 5,750 to male, Rs 3,330 to female and Rs 2,700 children Rohingya refugees who came to Nepal before 2013. Those Rohingyas who landed in Nepal since 2013 have not been recognised by UNHCR as ‘urban refugees’.
“Refugee allowances are now being cut everywhere in the world, not just in Nepal, but we continue to provide allowance for elderly and children,” says UNCHR’s Dipesh Das Shrestha. “Instead of subsistence allowance, we are now focused on giving vocational training to refugees. And we continue to support them for medical treatment and education, too.”
Of the Rohingyas who have sought refuge in Nepal only 120 of them have obtained ‘urban refugee’ cards from UNHCR. Apart from refugees from Bhutan, Tibet and Rohingyas, Nepal now provides refuge to people from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Iran, Iraq, Somalia and even Congo.
Since 2012, there have been several brutal pogroms against the Rohingya by Burma’s Buddhist majority who consider them ‘Bengali’. The Rohingya have actually lived in Burma’s Rakhine state for at least four generations, and most of them held Burmese citizenship till the early 1980s.
In 1984, Rangoon enacted a new citizenship law declaring Rohingyas as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. They were then effectively deprived of government jobs and facilities and tensions ran high. Since 2012, about 120,000 Rohingyas have fled Burma, either to Bangladesh, Thailand or Malaysia.
Some, like Hasan, fled north to India in search of his family, and from there travelled 1,400 km to eastern Nepal after someone told him there were refugee camps here. Only to discover that they were actually camps for refugees from Bhutan.
Hasan still hasn’t found his family.
Rohingya in Kathmandu
After crossing over into Bangladesh on a boat from Burma, 28-year-old Amir Hussain and his family came to Kathmandu via India in 2012.
Hussain and his family are among thousands of Rohingya who fled Burma after anti-Muslim attacks in parts of the western Rakhine state. The plight of Rohingya ‘boat people’ is making headlines in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.
When the group first reached Kathmandu, they didn’t know anybody. They first stopped at Jame Masjid, one of the city’s oldest mosques, from where they were advised to go the office of the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Although the UNHCR agreed to provide shelter to women and children the refugee families decided to stay at a cheap hotel in Bag Bazar because they didn’t want to leave their children. Today, Hussain and his family share a four-room flat in Kapan with two other Rohingya families. Each occupies a single room, and uses the empty room for namaz prayers.
Rafik Alam and his family were separated during their escape. Only after he was issued a refugee certificate from the UNHCR did Alam learn of his wife and children’s whereabouts. However it took Alam more than a year to reunite with his family in Bangladesh.
“My wife was pregnant when I lost her, she was brave enough to deliver the baby and bring them to Bangladesh on her own,” he says. “In Kathmandu we face a lot of problems but at least we do not have to fear for our lives.”
Before the riots erupted three years ago, Myanmar was home to some 800,000 Rohingya people. International reports show that 120,000 of them have since left the country. A citizenship law enacted in 1984 termed the Rohingya stateless immigrants from Bangladesh. As a result, they were not eligible for government jobs, or to apply for basic services.
But the real tragedy for the Rohingya began in 2012 as Burma embarked on the path to democracy, and the persecution by the majority Buddhists is driving the Rohingya refugee crisis.
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