Dola Mitra, Outlook, India – “It’s dangerous to go in there,” I am warned by several locals in Rakhine. “Those people are desperate. They are killers and rapists. They are smugglers and traffickers who will rob you.” An unknown dread creeps in as I pass the police pickets dotting a long, straight road which eventually leads to a gaggle of congested camps in an area called Thaye Schoge, on the outskirts of Sittwe, capital of Rakhine state. These are some of the infamous ‘Rohingya ghettos’ that had cropped up across Rakhine in the aftermath of the 2012 riots that killed 200 and displaced 1,25,000, gaining notoriety both as ‘testimonials of state persecution’ as well as ‘dens of criminal activity’. Many Rohingya refugees, men, women and children, found trapped in illegal trawlers (the so-called ‘boat people’) in the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal in May this year are said to be those who escaped from camps such as these. Most of their homes and villages and some government enclosures have now been turned into ‘camps’ where they have been confined. Cooped up thus, their movements are restricted by a government curfew, and they have lost their right to travel to other parts of the state. But authorities justify this by saying it is to prevent further communal flare-ups. The Rohingyas are at the centre of the raging international debate where organisations like the UN have been accusing the Myanmar government of pursuing policies of apartheid by enforcing such segregation between the Muslim Rohingyas and the rest in this west Myanmarese state. Such segregation has only turned the Rohingyas to become hostile towards outsiders and even resort to criminal activities.
please create awareness about the persecution of Rohingya Muslims, shouldn’t these specific buddhist monks be called terrorists? Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeWEXyR70nU Do share to create awareness!