Berita dari Islamonline.net
http://islamonline.net/English/News/2004-10/10/article03.shtml
Myanmar Muslims Struggling for Survival in Malaysia
A file photo for Myanmar Muslims seeking refugee
status at the UNHCR office in Kuala Lumpur
By Kazi Mahmood, IOL Correspondent
KUALA LUMPUR, October 10 (IslamOnline.net) – It was a
hectic day at a car washing center in this
metropolitan Malaysian city with nine workers working
hard to get the job done properly for meager earnings.
They all hail from Myanmar’s Rohingya, a sect of
Muslims who have been left on their own to survive in
the new "concrete jungle" of Malaysia, escaping
oppression and abuses in their motherland.
"We came here since we were small, refugees from
Myanmar. We crossed borders illegally with our
parents, at least with those who survived the terror
from the Myanmar government against the Rohingyas in
the 1970s and 1990s," Abdul Majeed told
IslamOnline.net.
His colleague Abdul Salaam can now make a living after
years of austerity and hard times in Myanmar.
"I am not ashamed to do this job; this is what I can
do here to survive without asking for aid or
assistance from organizations or from people. I have
gone through the worst when I was a small boy," he
said.
During the Friday prayers, Myanmar Muslim women clad
in Malay traditional dresses would be seen accompanied
with their children, begging for alms outside the
major mosques in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, the two
states in Malaysia where the Myanmar Muslims are
mostly concentrated.
They are also to be seen in parts of Penang, which is
an island state in Malaysia.
Most of them come to Malaysia after crossing the
borders from Thailand to seek refugee status in the
fast track Muslim country.
Rohingyas are the aboriginal inhabitants of Myanmar’s
Arakan. Islam spread in the region at the bbeginning
of the 7th century when merchants from the Arab,
Moorish, and Mughal areas began to settle in the
territory.
The Arakan region was ruled by independent kingdoms
until the region came under the control of the Burmese
in the 18th century.
Following the third Anglo-Burmese war late in the same
century, the British took control of Burma (now called
Myanmar).
When Burma gained its independence in 1948, the North
Arakan Muslim League engaged in armed attacks in
futile efforts to secede and be part of East Pakistan.
Clampdowns by Myanmar authorities forced Muslims to
set up armed resistance groups.
Today these groups have been reduced to a few
militants fighting under the umbrella of the
self-styled Arakan Rohingya National Organization
(ARNO).
Myanmar Horrors
Abdul Majeed, who lives in a rented house in the
Ampang area, had enough of hard times living as an
illegal immigrant in Malaysia, but what really
condoles him is that he escaped the hell in Myanmar.
He along with his well-to-do family were forced to
flee their homeland, escaping crackdowns by Myanmar
police, otherwise they would have been slaughtered
like many others.
"I would keep all the children together and would move
from one area after my parents are arrested. Most of
the times, I witness the arrest by the immigration
police in the streets of Masjid India or Jalan Tuanku
Abdul Rahman, but am powerless and I hide and watch.
It is so heart breaking," said tearful Abdul Majeed.
According to unofficial statistics, up to 3.5 million
Rohingyas were displaced or forced to move out of
Arakan due to terror campaigns by the Myanmar military
and police.
"I have survived ethnic cleansing and systematic
murder at the hands of the Myanmar secret police and I
have survived the harsh life in Malaysia where no one
really helps. Only a few Chinese people would help us
in Kuala Lumpur but they too are frightened since we
do not have official papers," said Mukhtar, who sells
books in the streets of Masjid India.
"What we are witnessing in Myanmar is true oppression.
In Myanmar, Muslims are being pulled out of mosque by
the military at the middle of as’Salaat (prayer) and
sent to camps to join forced labour," said another
refugee, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Muslim Apathy
According to the Muslim Minority Affairs (MMA), a
department affiliated to the Malaysian Muslim Youth
Movement (ABIM), there are 10,000 Rohingya Muslims in
Malaysia, most of them from the Rangoon region.
Those hailing from Arakan are mostly located in
Bangladesh.
"Arakan is located in the North Western Province of
Myanmar and is considered the land of the Rohingyas.
It is not recognized by the Myanmar regime, which has
been after the Muslims as early as 1942 when more than
a 100,000 of them were massacred by the Burmese
Independent Movement hand in hand with local Monks and
Buddhists," said Ullah, a Rohingya volunteer with the
MMA.
"The Rohingya Diaspora is little known to the Muslim
world which has showed little concern to the fate of
their brothers and sisters and even the Organization
of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is dormant on this
issue," lamented Salim Mukthar.
The crisis of the Rohyingas deepened in the 1970s,
when Myanmar authorities started nationwide survey,
which gave the Myanmar citizenship only to those who
proved that they lived in the country since 1824.
Some 200,000 Muslims were displaced en masse and ran
into bordering Bangladesh where they lived in camps
set up by the United Nations Human Rights Commission
(UNHRC).
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