Mohammad Amin, 17, fled his home in Rakhine State five days ago and reached Bangladesh by swimming across the Naf River, which divides the two countries.
“The (Myanmar) army killed my father and elder brother. I hid on a hill and then walked and swam across the river, and took refuge at a mosque (in Bangladesh),” he told AFP by phone from Cox’s Bazar, near the border.
“Where I looked I saw only burnt houses. I don’t know what happened to my mother and sister.”
Like Amin, many Rohingya refugees are seeking protection from death and despair by fleeing to Bangladesh, but the Bangladeshi government is sending them back.
Since the military crackdown on Rakhine State that last month, Bangladesh has sent hundreds of Rohingya refugees back over the border, where they risk arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial killings and rape at the hands of Myanmar security forces.
Human Rights Watch has called on Bangladesh to uphold customary international law, which forbids summarily rejecting asylum seekers fleeing widespread human rights abuses or generalized violence.
According to HRW:
Scores have been killed and over 1,200 buildings destroyed in five villages in the predominately ethnic Rohingya areas near Maungdaw Township during renewed violence since the October 9 attacks on border guard posts in Burma’s Rakhine State. There are allegations of serious abuses by Burma’s security forces, including arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial killings, and rape. Much of the impacted areas remain sealed to international aid organizations. The United Nations estimates that 30,000 people have been internally displaced by the violence. Many Rohingya are fleeing, some getting on boats or walking or swimming to seek sanctuary in bordering Bangladesh.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has also asked Bangladesh to keep its borders open to people fleeing violence.
However, the Bangladeshi government has said it cannot afford to support more Rohingya refugees. The country is already home to more than 30,000 registered refugees, and authorities estimate that there are between 300,000 and 500,000 Rohingya refugees also living there.
“Rohingya infiltration is an uncomfortable issue for Bangladesh,” said Bangladeshi Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan. “We don’t want illegal Rohingya immigration.”
Those who do make it into Bangladesh face a new set of difficulties, including squalid conditions inside refugee camps and subsistence-level rations. Unregistered Rohingya refugees rarely visit hospitals or report crimes to police for fear of being discovered and sent back to Rakhine State. Still, these challenges are preferable to being hunted down in Rakhine State.
One elderly woman in the Teknaf camp in Bangladesh told HRW: “No one wants us. It feels like a sin to have been born.”
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