After the Myanmar coup ... and the arrival of General Min Aung to power

The Rohingya fear an unknown future

  • Rohingya in refugee camps terrified of the Myanmar coup.

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  • General Min Aung spoke of his intention to return the Rohingya refugees to their homes for fear of sanctions by the Americans and Europeans.

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  • No Rohingya had any tears of eyes of what happened to San Suu Kyi because they paid tribute to the army that committed the genocide against them.

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I have been living in a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh since 2017, after a campaign of murder, rape and arson by the Myanmar army to force some 750,000 Rohingya people to flee their homes in Rakhine State, Myanmar.

Since the military coup on the first of February, our camp in which we live has become buzzing with dialogues and uncertainty about what will happen in the future.

General Min Aung Hling, who ordered our extermination, is now the head of state.

The demonstrations against the coup spread throughout Myanmar, and I looked at news reports and social networking sites to see the demonstrations that lasted for several days, some of which included thousands of people, to see if the coup had caused my countrymen to change their minds about the state of indifference in which they are living.

And I always hoped to hear a few words about the dilemma we are in, about our future, amid all this talk about democracy and democratic rights.

Feeling sorry

I saw dozens of websites and pictures, and eventually I found a picture of a young man on a street in Myanmar, carrying a banner that read: “I really feel sorry for the Rohingya crisis.” And I found a few reports of fewer people in Myanmar expressing their regret. To support violence against the Rohingya, or defend their killing.

But I did not find any leader from the National League party, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, saying a word about the place of the Rohingya in the democratic system they are demanding.

I was born into a Rohingya family, in Maungdaw, a town in Rakhine State, in 1991. Several decades before my birth, the Myanmar army worked to curtail our rights and reject us, as illegal and ethnically diverse Bangladeshi immigrants.

In 1982, the army passed a law in order to effectively deny our citizenship.

Being a Rohingya in Myanmar means living cautiously and submitting to a limited form of education, healthcare, and other social services.

Nevertheless, I always found a spark of hope when I heard my grandfather speak fondly of Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, which he has officially joined.

And he was telling me how he welcomed the party campaign activists into our house and slaughtered the largest cow in our herd, when the army allowed the national elections to take place in 1990. He was talking about how to leave the house for several days in an election campaign in other villages, to persuade our people to vote for the National League, It is Aung San Suu Kyi's party (the military ignored her victory, and placed her under house arrest until 2010, when it began a semi-democratic transition).

In the 2015 elections, my family and the others were Rohingya, still placing their trust in me, San Suu Kyi, and her party, hoping that it would help them end the discrimination and violence they face.

But when the Rohingya arrived at the polls, we were denied the right to vote, and San Suu Kyi refused to talk about being disenfranchised.

Things turn out for the worse

The League won the overwhelming majority, but things turned for the worse for us.

The deep-rooted prejudice that the Buddhist majority fostered against us after the semi-democratic opening was like a blanket.

During that period, Internet service was widely available and inexpensive, and a third of the country's population used to use Facebook.

And hate speech and violence began to increase against us, after Buddhist monks and the army began campaigns of hate against us on social media.

And every day I look at social media and find hate messages describing us as Bengali, and as terrorists.

Then there were warnings to kill us.

Neither San Suu Kyi nor her government paid any attention to it.

Then, in 2017, came the military crackdown, killing thousands of Rohingya civilians and raping hundreds of women and young girls.

On August 28, 2017, my father and I were at home in Maungdaw, when dozens of military vehicles arrived, and the army imposed a cordon around the village.

My father and I hid next to a stream.

We watched, as our friends and neighbors were being killed by the bullets of the soldiers who burned our village.

I was not brave enough to look towards our house while it was burning, but I saw the flame rising into the sky.

We crossed the Bay of Bengal in boats for escape and safety.

I now live in the refugee camp we fled to in Cox's Bazar, with my family of seven in a canvas tent.

The camp was crowded with about 100,000 refugees.

There were protests in the camp against the military coup, but no tears were shed for San Suu Kyi, who defended the army and its genocide.

After the coup happened, General Min Aung Hling spoke of his intention to return Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh.

But we don't trust him.

And he talked about bringing us back to please the United States and the European Union to avoid sanctions.

Currently, the general deployed soldiers from the Artillery Regiment in the capital, Yangon, the very same forces that committed the genocide against us.

I fear the return of horrific violence, and I am worried about the fate of about 600,000 Rohingya people who still live in Myanmar.

Thousands of them are still confined to camps within Rakhine State.

On the phone, I was able to contact one of my friends who still lives in my town.

He told me, "The army continues to block Facebook, WhatsApp, and other social media sites."

“Markets, shops and mosques are still closed in Maungdaw after the military coup,” he added.

No one can leave his house.

We are in a state of great fear, and we do not know what will happen in the future. ”

A UN call to rescue a group of Rohingya refugees at sea

Yesterday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees called for immediate action to save a group of Rohingya refugees, who were swept away by a boat in the Andaman Sea without food or drink, and many of them are suffering from disease and severe dehydration.

The commission said it was aware that some passengers had died, and that the number of deaths rose over the weekend on board the boat that left the coastal area of ​​Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh, about 10 days ago, before its engine failed.

"In the absence of accurate information on the location of the refugees, we informed the authorities in the countries concerned about these reports, and we appealed to them for immediate assistance," she added in a statement.

The statement said: "It is necessary to act immediately, to save lives and prevent the aggravation of the tragedy," and offered to support governments by providing humanitarian aid and quarantine measures for those rescued.

A senior official with the Indian Coast Guard said the boat had been spotted, and reports said it was safe, but nothing was known about the passenger’s condition.

Hundreds of thousands of minority Rohingya Muslims fled a bloody campaign by Myanmar security forces in 2017 and poured into neighboring Bangladesh, where nearly a million people live in poor conditions in refugee camps.

From Reuters

Mayo Ali: Rohingya poet and activist who fled ethnic cleansing in Myanmar.

The

deep-rooted prejudice, which was reinforced by the Buddhist majority against the Rohingya after the semi-democratic opening, was more like a blanket.

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