Monday, March 15, 2010

Burmese refugees' grim future in Bangladesh

TO OUR MUSLIM BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN BURMA
As Muslims, they were unwanted in Buddhist Burma. As foreigners, they are unwanted in Muslim Bangladesh. Regardless of their ethnicity or religion, they deserve our compassion.

KUTUPALONG, Bangladesh (The Irrawaddy) — Dildar Begum has no country, no job, no food, and she is fast running out of hope. Her husband is imprisoned in a Bangladeshi jail while she lives in a slum with her five children. She is reduced to begging for rice from her impoverished neighbors. Her family is starving, she said.

"I can't live this way. It's better if my kids and I die suddenly," the 25-year-old woman said. Begum is one of the hundreds of thousands of members of the Rohingya ethnic group who have fled to Bangladesh to escape persecution in neighboring Burma — only to find themselves languishing in filthy slums or open-air camps where food and water are scarce and medical care, nonexistent. More>>

  • Bangladeshi military atrocities condemned in Calcutta
    (UNPO, Mar. 10, 2010) The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) Support Group-Kolkata organized a protest/press conference on the recent atrocities in the CHT (Feb. 19-24, 2010) at the Kolkata Press Club, West Bengal, India on Mar. 3, 2010.
  • Burma's forgotten Rohingya
    (BBC News) They have been called one of the world's most persecuted people. Some argue that they are also one of the most forgotten. Thousands of Rohingya fled Burma for Bangladesh in 1992. The Rohingya people of western Burma's Arakan State are forbidden from marrying or travelling without permission and have no legal right to own land or property.

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