YANGON, Myanmar — Brights Islam says it’s been more than six years since he and his family had to leave their home in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine, a state straddling the western coast of Myanmar.
Little has since changed from the violence then, when an estimated 200 people were killed and more than 100,000 people were displaced from military-led violence. Those displaced were overwhelmingly Rohingya, a long-oppressed Muslim minority many who today still remain in what they are told are temporary camps. Conditions are dismal, Islam says, with several families often squeezed into small spaces.
“Before 2012, people had their own house where they could live,” Islam said in a telephone interview. “But now they are living in this camp in very cramped conditions.”
The events in 2012 foreshadowed more widespread violence, the first major incident in a tragic course of events that has highlighted religious tensions in the Southeast Asian country. Attacks by Rohingya insurgents sparked a brutal army crackdown against the Muslim communities in northern Rakhine State in August of 2017. As a result, nearly 700,000 Rohingya have fled the Southeast Asian nation, with most inhabiting massive refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh.
The Sept. 3 court verdict against two journalists working for Reuters, who were investigating last year’s crackdown, has focused international attention on the 2017 military operation, which U.N. investigators say included widespread atrocities against the Muslim communities. Yet an estimated 600,000 Rohingya remain in Myanmar and government-enforced travel restrictions are worsening their lives, affecting the aid they receive and their ability to provide for themselves.
“In many of these communities, children can’t go to the state school, farmers can’t access their fields, fishermen can no longer fish where they did before, traders are blocked from the markets, and even sick people struggle to get to the hospital,” says Pierre Peron, spokesperson in Myanmar for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Government Inaction
The Myanmar government has come under international criticism for its handling of the crisis in Rakhine, particularly its treatment of the Rohingya. It denies that its forces committed any wrongdoing during last year’s “clearance operation,” which it says was conducted to root out insurgents from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, or ARSA. The insurgents attacked police and army outposts in late August, killing about a dozen officials.
Last week, members of a U.N. mission on Myanmar said senior members of the military, including army chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, should be put on trial for allegedly committing genocide against the Rohingya.
Myanmar rejected the mission’s findings saying they were “detrimental to social cohesion in Rakhine State,” and has formed its own commission that it says will investigate alleged human rights abuses (previous commissions formed by the government to investigate alleged abuses in Rakhine State have exonerated government forces).
A rare point of agreement between the government and the international community is that the recommendations put forward by the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, which was led by the late former U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan, are the best path forward for solving the crisis. Recommendations from the commission, which submitted its final report just hours before the ARSA attacks last year, include providing freedom of movement, health care and education to all people in Rakhine, as well as a review of a controversial citizenship law that denies many Rohingya access to citizenship.
Government representatives could not be reached for comment, but the country’s de facto leader, Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, recently said that the government had implemented 81 of the 88 recommendations. International observers had mostly been locked out of the process, and the long-term nature of the recommendations has left many observers skeptical regarding this claim.
One recommendation the government says it is following is developing a strategy to close all IDP camps in Rakhine State, but many Rohingya remain skeptical.
“The government says it is taking action, but they do nothing,” Islam said.
Access Issues
A few hours north of Sittwe is Mrauk U, the capital of what was the once-mighty Rakhine kingdom until it was sacked by a Burmese king in the late 18 th century. Mrauk U remains a point of pride for many people in Rakhine, and the town continues to attract a steady stream of tourists keen to see its ancient temples and pagodas. The Annan-led U.N. commission has called on Myanmar’s government ensure Mrauk U’s eligibility as a world heritage site.
A short drive from Mrauk U are many Rohingya who have been unable to leave their villages since the 2012 bloodshed. Although they are located far from the epicenter of last year’s violence, they face severe hardships as a result of restrictions on their freedom of movement, aid groups say.
In a report published in late 2017, Amnesty International said Rohingya living in villages in central Rakhine were enduring conditions that ” legally constitutes apartheid.”
“The situation has not changed for us. We haven’t been able to leave this place, so we cannot access health care or education,” a Rohingya man said during a visit to the area earlier this year. The man requested anonymity due to fears for his safety.
The man said there were no schools in the village, so children spent the day sitting around with nothing to do. “What are they supposed to do?” he said.
Islam adds that access to education and health care are also minimal for residents in the camp he and his family reside in. “There are health clinics, but the doctor only comes for two hours a day, five days a week. Many people want to see a doctor, but cannot be treated due to a lack of time.”
The situation is particularly perilous in the case of emergencies, Islam says. For example, if a woman is pregnant and requires urgent surgery she has to first go to a health clinic in the camps, where a doctor from the township hospital is called. “Sometimes it can take a few hours, but other times it takes half a day.”
Restrictions on movement for the Rohingya “entrench their vulnerability and dependence on humanitarian aid,” says U.N. spokesman Peron.
U.N. agencies and NGOs also are “impeded by a complex bureaucracy that has curtailed our ability to provide humanitarian assistance in Rakhine State,” Peron says. Many humanitarian activities in northern Rakhine State have been curtailed by the government since the ARSA attacks last August, workers for aid groups say.
“Most humanitarian organizations that had been working in northern Rakhine State for years have still not been able to resume life-saving programs for some of the most vulnerable people in the world.”
Meanwhile, Rohingya inside and outside of Myanmar are continuing to suffer.
“I have been an IDP for six years now,” Islam says. “I’m not allowed to go to the market in Sittwe, to the hospital, or go to schools or universities. The question I have for the government and the international community is, how much longer do I have to stay here?”
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Daily Lives of Rohingya in Myanmar Are Worsening, Aid Experts Say originally appeared on usnews.com
