Rohingya people - the symbol of tragedy

Hanna Andrysiak
May 25, 2020
4 min read

Updated: Apr 2, 2021

Imagine the worst thing that can happen to You. Next, multiply it 10 times. I am sure that even then, it will be better than this what Rohingya people are experiancing. Not many of us have heared about them. But we should know their story.

Who are Rohingya people?

The UN Secretary-General - Antonio Guterres descirbed them as

one of, if not the most discriminated people in the world.

They are Islamic, ethnic group living in northern Burma (Myanmar) - Rakhine State. Someone says, that they aren't ethnic group because no evidence of creating their national identity has been ever prooved. There are two theories about their roots: they are descendants of Islamic merchants or successors of Bengali immigrants. Burma government believes in the second theory and as they are none an ethnic group nor Burmise citizens, they are being discriminated and repressed by Burma government.

Stateless people

Rohingya people have no documents, so they don't have an access to education, healthcare or job. They have no right to get any support, to travel without permission or, in some cases, to have more than two kids. Since 2012 their houses, schools and mosques have been burned, while they were repressed. Someone can say that this is because of Buddhist monk - Ashin Wirathu. While travelling around the country, he was announcing that Muslims scheme against Buddhists or prepare terrorist attempts.

Beggining of genocide

Crackdown on Rohingya people began in 2016 in the nothern part of Burma where this etnic group's villages were located. Government destroyed them and used lot of violence against Rohingya. Then, many people left their homes and tried to cross the border. Some of them happily migrated to another countries, but on the Bangladesh border was made the biggest refugee camp in the world - Cox's Bazar, where many of them trapped.

Hell on Earth

Our mothers, sisters, fathers, brothers, and everything in Rakhine were burned. I saw with my own eyes how children were thrown. I saw them snatched from their mothers' laps and thrown into the stream. So don't send us back to Rakhine, just kill us here.

said one of Rohingya men.

Rohingya people experienced many human violence, like extrajudical killings, gang rapes, arson of their villages and schools or infanticides. It was reported that the government and Burma citizens killed at least 24 000 Rohingya people and did gang rapes and other forms of sexual violence on 18 000 Rohingya women and girls (one report is discribing them as "massive and systematic"). 116 000 Rohingya were beaten and government threw 36 000 more into fire. Burman police also detained 423 people (13 of them were children, the youngest was 10 years old) and said:

We the police have to arrest those who collaborated with the attackers, children or not, but the court will decide if they are guilty; we are not the ones who decide.

Some organisations like United Nations or Amnesty International described this whole situation as a crime against humanity. This is hard to write or read about it. I can't imagine how it is to expirience that.

You can't imagine...

Jamalida Begum, one of the Rohingya women, explains what happened to her family. Burma military entered village, where she was living. They killed her husband and burned down his shop. They entered her village again and selected 30 women out of 200 or 250 living there. She was in this group. Military men threw her down to the ground. Then,

Two of them raped me as much as they wanted. When I looked at them in the eye, they punched my eyes. I was knocked unconscious from the punches.

Media blackout

Since crackdown, the Burma government made media blackout on Rakhine State. But there are bloggers who try to show the world what is really happening in Burma. They are making videos and give important informations to the world. But every time, they can be caugth or arrested. One of the bloggers said that

We are collecting brutalities against Rohingya. We share most of our videos, photos on WhatsApp. If the government knew that we are doing this, they would kill us. So many who are doing this work have been forcibly disappeared. It means killed in Myanmar.

COVID-19 is there also

Cox's Bazar is the biggest refugee camp in the world. In Kutupalong live about 600 000 migrants. Imagine what will happen if in this place, without proper healthcare system, hygiene, with people living next to each other (from 40 000 to 70 000 people per square kilometre) and starving every day, the coronavirus test is possitive. Unfortunately, two Rohingya refugees had possitive tests. Officals said that this people are isolated and treated, other 1 900 refugees are isolated for tests. Dr Shamim Jahan from "Save the Children's Health" in Bangladesh said that

Now that the virus has entered the world's largest refugee settlement in Cox's Bazar we are looking at the very real prospect that thousands of people may die from COVID-19.