Terrorized, starving and homeless: Myanmar's Rohingya still forgotten - CNN.com
By Dan Rivers, CNN
November 26, 2012 -- Updated 1109 GMT (1909 HKT)
CNN.com
Sittwe, Myanmar (CNN) -- It's been three years since I reported on the plight
of the Rohingya Muslim people of western Myanmar and neighboring Bangladesh.
We called our documentary "A Forgotten People," and it looked at appalling
incidents where boatloads of refugees fleeing poverty and persecution arrived
in Thailand only to be towed back out to sea and abandoned by the Thai security
forces. Hundreds died or went missing.
WATCH: The Forgotten People: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Since then, the Rohingya have remained off the political agenda in western
countries.
But now that's changing. U.S. President Barack Obama addressed their plight
during his recent visit to Yangon. The lukewarm response he got in the
auditorium was nothing to the vitriol he got online. Even mentioning the name
Rohingya is controversial for some in Myanmar.
Myanmar's displaced detail violence
Behind the violence in Myanmar
Buddhist vs. Muslim unrest in Myanmar
Obama's historic visit to Myanmar
READ: Obama lauds Suu Kyi, praises Myanmar
We have come to Rahkine to report on the latest threat to the Rohingya. What we
have found is shocking. The Rohingyas are among the most persecuted people on
the planet. In both Myanmar and Bangladesh -- where they have a deep-rooted
heritage dating back to when it was known as East Bengal -- they are not
officially citizens and are denied passports, access to health-care, education
and decent jobs.
Each country claims the Rohingya is the other's problem. In July this year, the
Bangladeshi government ordered three international aid organizations to stop
helping Rohingya who were crossing the border from Myanmar.
READ: What's behind violence in Myanmar?
In Myanmar, their perilous situation has become markedly worse in recent
months. Mobs of Buddhist Rahkine extremists have been torching whole Rohingya
villages. Hundreds have died and more than 100,000 people have been forced to
flee, according to humanitarian groups.
But there is nowhere for them to go. So driven by fear many are congregating in
huge makeshift camps on the edge of the Rahkine town of Sittwe.
I was expecting the camps to be grim -- but I wasn't prepared to see children
starving to death. This isn't journalistic hyperbole. The two western doctors
working unofficially here have watched several children perish before their
eyes -- not from a rare tropical disease or an untreated chronic condition, but
simply from malnutrition.
I find it sickening and outrageous that this is happening in a land of
plentiful food in 2012. Perhaps I am naïve or too idealistic. I should probably
know better, I should have seen enough of the world's misery and violence to be
unaffected by a wide-eyed kid too fatigued to swat the flies from her eyes. But
this one broke my heart.
She's not alone.
An assessment in August by Refugees International found that "2,000 acutely
malnourished children who were at a high risk of mortality."
Thousands of kids like Saulama Hafu are starving to death.
International aid agencies are beginning to wake up to the scale of the
problem. The United Nations has just launched an appeal for US$41 million.
Tents, wells and latrines have been installed in some of the camps, but
according to Refugees International, camp facilities are "unacceptable and fall
well below international standards" and "are a direct manifestation of a
funding gap." They say water and sanitation facilities in particular are
"wholly inadequate, resulting in life-threatening illnesses."
Many Rohingya are surviving on a cup of rice each day and little else. It's not
enough for breast-feeding mothers to sustain their babies. It's not enough for
adults. It's not enough for little Saulama, whose skeletal body is as light as
a doll's. She looks like a famine victim but she is starving to death in a camp
surrounded by paddy fields full of rice. There's a busy market a couple of
miles away, but her mother is effectively imprisoned here. This is a man-made
crisis that could be ended immediately, with political will.
I asked Saulama's age, thinking that she looked like a toddler. My own daughter
is three and is considerably larger, so I guess perhaps she was two. I was
appalled when her mother told me Saulama is five-years old. In the west, she'd
be in her first year of school. Here, she could be in the last year of her
life. She's so thin she can barely walk. Her limbs are pitifully emaciated.
After six months in this camp, she looks like she can't go on.
The doctors have not been given visas to help here, so they can only get the
most basic supplies. The Myanmar government is reluctant to allow aid workers
to help people who don't officially exist. But the reality is that there are an
estimated one million Rohingya in Western Myanmar and at least a tenth of them
have been driven from their homes.
Yet driving around Sittwe, away from the camps, you rarely see a Rohingya in
the town center. When we asked a Rohingya driver to bring us back from the
camps to our hotel to sort out a problem with our camera, the hotel manager was
furious. He told us in no uncertain terms not to use a Muslim driver again and
said people had seen the driver come into the hotel and had complained. It is
apartheid of the most extreme form.
Near Sittwe University, which sits amid several Rohingya villages and camps,
RohingyaS on foot, bicycle or scooter are forced to pull off the road when
Buddhist Rakhine students are leaving classes. Sharing the same stretch of
tarmac as a Rohingya is unacceptable for many Rahkine Buddhists; heaven forbid
a Rohingya should attempt to board the same bus or eat in the same restaurant.
Aung Mingalar is the last neighborhood of Rohingya living inside the town of
Sittwe; the rest of population is now under canvas or tarps out in the
countryside. This island of Rohingya houses is now effectively a ghetto
surrounded by barbed wire.
The soldiers that patrol the area are supposed to protect the Rohingya from
further attacks by hostile locals, but videos taken by Rohingya purportedly
showing an outbreak of violence in Aung Mingalar in June show the troops doing
little to put out fires set in Rohingya homes. The Rohingya fear more attacks
here, but can do little to stop the gangs of extremists who they say were
orchestrated by a local Rahkine nationalist party.
The spokesman for that party denies involvement, but has open contempt for the
Rohingya, flinching when I even mention the term. He says it's a recently made
up word, and that the Rohingya are simply Bengalis from neighboring Bangladesh.
Ominously he goes further. He doesn't just want to kick all Rohingya out. He
wants all Muslims out of Rakhine state, including officially recognized ethic
groups like the Kaman. The anti-Muslim sentiment has spread across Myanmar,
with protests outside a mosque in the main city of Yangon.
The International Crisis Group report on the situation is deeply worrying,
while Human Rights Watch has also completed some important work, highlighting
the atrocities, with satellite photos showing the vast areas of destruction.
What has disappointed many is that Nobel laureate and pro-democracy leader Aung
San Suu Kyi took a long time to speak out clearly to uphold Rohingya rights and
condemn the extremists. She recently told Indian Broadcaster NTV: "Violence is
something I condemn completely, but don't forget that violence has been
committed by both sides. This is why I prefer not to take sides and also I want
to work towards reconciliation between these two communities. I'm not going to
be able to do that if I'm going to take sides."
Suu Kyi elaborated further, saying: "There's a quarrel whether people are true
citizens under the law or whether they have come over as migrants later from
Bangladesh. One of the very interesting and rather disturbing facts of this
whole problem is that most people seem to think as that there was only one
country involved in this border issue. But there are two countries. There's
Bangladesh one side, there's Burma on the other and the security and the
security of the border is surely the responsibility of both countries."
But in the past she has referred to Rohingyas with the pejorative term
"Bengalis" suggesting some should not be recognized as citizens in Myanmar.
The whole issue has tarnished the glow of fast-paced reform in Myanmar. While
the rest of the country is enjoying freedoms not experienced in 60 years of
military dictatorship, in Rahkine State the ethnic cleansing is continuing with
impunity. It demands the attention of the international community, for the sake
of children like Saulama... before it's too late.
© 2012 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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