FATIMAFATIMA

30, refugee

ETHNICITY: Rohingya

BIRTHPLACE: Maungdaw Township, Arakan State, Burma

INTERVIEWED IN: Kutupalong makeshift camp, Bangladesh

We met Fatima one afternoon in the dense and sprawling Kutupalong makeshift refugee camp, near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, where she and over 20,000 other stateless Rohingya refugees have made a settlement next door to an official refugee camp. We sat with her inside her mud home, speaking intensely for hours. She kneeled during the five hours of our interview, smiling sweetly and, at times, gently crying while recounting the many trials she experienced in Burma and since her exile in Bangladesh. A dozen or more of Fatima’s neighbors passed by, listening and nodding as Fatima described the fear and daily harassment she encountered as a Muslim woman in Burma.¹¹ Fatima now lives in Bangladesh with her husband. Unregistered as a refugee by the UNHCR, she, along with many of the camp’s inhabitants, are denied official protection and left without sufficient food or other basic resources.²² Limited employment options, coupled with the risk of arrest and deportation, leave Fatima and her husband with an uncertain future.

According to a 2009 report from Human Rights Watch titled “Perilous Plight: Burma’s Rohingya Take to the Sea”: “The Rohingya are descended from a mix of Arakanese Buddhists, Chittagonian Bengalis, and Arabic sea traders… Centuries of coexistence with Arakanese Buddhists was bifurcated by British colonialism, when the boundaries of India and Burma were demarcated. As a result, the Rohingya became a people caught between states, with the majority situated in newly independent Burma in 1948.”

Kutupalong’s makeshift camp population was over 30,000 in early 2010, but according to the Arakan Project it is now reduced to under 30,000.

I was born in central Maungdaw District, in Arakan State. In my village there were about 200 Muslims—once upon a time there were a lot more, but so many have fled. There was a NaSaKa base only a ten-minute walk away, with three or four hundred people. I saw the NaSaKa every day.³³

The NaSaKa, an acronym for “Nay-Sat Kut-kwey Ye,” is a border task force established in 1992 under the direct command of the SPDC. They are frequently cited for human rights violations against the Rohingya.

The NaSaKa has Buddhist Rakhine people and all the ethnicities except Muslims. They occupied my village and made a camp that was bigger than the village itself. Their families stayed there as well, with people of all ages—old, young, everything.

As Rohingya Muslims, we had to inform the NaSaKa about everything, because they say to us, “You are not local people in this country. You are a guest, so you have to do everything that we say.” The NaSaKa says that because Burma is not a country of Muslims—it’s a country of Buddhists.⁴⁴

For more on the Rohingya’s official status in Burma, see the section “Rohingya: A Stateless People,” pages 478-481 of the appendix.

We had to pay the NaSaKa. When our family grew in size, we needed to build another house, and we had to pay the NaSaKa for this. If I made a chicken farm, I needed to pay money to the NaSaKa. If our family had four or five chickens, we had to give one to them. If anybody died, we also had to give money. If a woman got pregnant, she would have to inform the NaSaKa, and then she would have to pay after she’d given birth, to register the newborn.

Some of my women neighbors were attacked by the NaSaKa—they were arrested and then raped in detention. When the families came to know of this, they had to go to the NaSaKa base and give some money for the woman to be released. If a family was not able to give enough money, the NaSaKa would keep the woman, and the family had to beg the people in the village for help. Once they raised the money, they could return to the NaSaKa and pay for the woman to be released.

Many women who come to Bangladesh from Burma have been raped. I think that many of the Muslim women in this camp, for example, have been raped. If people come to know that a woman was raped, nobody is interested in marrying her; it will be difficult for her.

Women are victims of torture. For this reason, we look for another Muslim country; that is why we are here in Bangladesh today. I was also a victim.

HE NEEDED NOTHING BUT PRAYER

My five siblings and I never went to school when we were young. I had three sisters and two brothers; I was the third born. I would have liked to go to school, but my family didn’t have enough money for the school fees, even though it cost very little—1,500 kyats for one student.⁵⁵

Approximately US$1.50.

My father was a day laborer, cultivating rice. He was religious—he needed nothing but prayer. My father would gather the people and tell them to go to the mosque for prayer time. One time, while my father was reciting the Koran, the army came and took him and some other people for forced labor—they forced the people to build embankments on a shrimp farm north of our village. The army kept my father for three days—during that time my family thought about him a lot, and we cried.

I only remember that one time, but I think they took him other times too. The army would come to our family and demand a person for forced work, so my father would try to find someone to go in his place. If my father wasn’t able to find someone, then my father went himself.

THEY ARE DRUNK AND CRAZY

I was around twelve when my father passed away. He died of diarrhea in 1990 or 1991. At the time, my mother was pregnant with my little sister. When my father was sick, we went to the village doctor—he was our neighbor, so it only took five or six minutes to get him. When the doctor came to our house, he just took my father’s temperature and gave injections. For just one day my father was passing stool, and then at midnight he passed away. He was buried the next day.

To honor our father in the Islamic tradition, our neighbors made a janazah, and they kept the dead body in front of them.⁶⁶ We started crying, and finally the people buried him. We spent one day praying.

The salat-l-janazah is the Muslim funeral prayer. The community gatherers and the imam (prayer leader) is present.

Because my father was gone, I was obliged to work. The standard duty of men was to earn something for our family, but because my father was no more, my mother sold cakes to earn money. Since the very beginning, my mother has done a lot of things for us, and since my father died, she’s always supported me. My mother is very affectionate toward me, but she isn’t educated—she just knows how to read the Koran.

My mother made the cakes at home. We made two kinds of cake because there are two types of rice. She used flour and some sugar and coconut in the first kind. The other kind she would make is called winter cake. She collected green rice and threw it in to make the cakes—it was tasty. One cake cost 50 kyats, which was expensive at the time. The other one cost 25 kyats. In one day we would make 500 kyats.⁷⁷ My mother gave cakes to me and my two brothers, and then we would go to the market to sell them. We didn’t have any entertainment. We lived a miserable life.

50 kyats is approximately US$0.05; 25 kyats is approximately US$0.025. 500 kyats is approximately US$0.50.

When walking down the street, I always felt stressed about the NaSaKa, like they could come and attack me. They are drunk and crazy—I was always thinking like this. More than once, the NaSaKa took everything that I had—all of my money and all of the cakes I was selling. I didn’t say anything to them. They took my things like that eight or ten other times. Whenever they took my things, I had to start begging from people to survive. I didn’t get money, but I would get a little bit of rice from other Muslims.

WE NEVER GOT MY LITTLE SISTER BACK

My little sister’s disappearance happened in my village. She was carrying rice to the market alone when the NaTaLa villagers came in a group and snatched her.⁸⁸ I was twenty-two, and my sister was eleven or twelve years old. There were a lot of people around when the NaTaLa villagers took her, but they just sat there.

NaTaLa is the acronym for the Ministry for Development of Border Areas and National Races. Model villages created by the SPDC in Arakan State are built through the confiscation of Rohingya lands and with Rohingya forced labor, with the intention of further displacing Rohingya communities.

The NaTaLa villagers were sent by the Burmese government from other areas of Burma to live in our village. Some of them dress like the NaSaKa, and people are very scared of them. The government sent them to torture the Rohingya people.

My family members and I rushed to the NaTaLa village to demand our sister after some villagers told us what happened, but the NaTaLa villagers beat us. They just said, “Go away from here.”

There is no way to get justice. My mother brought the matter to the local VPDC chairman, but in vain.⁹⁹ If you go to the NaSaKa, they say, “The NaTaLa villagers are sent here by the government, so we can’t do anything against them.” We never got my little sister back and I miss her. We have lost her. We think she might have been killed.

The Village Peace and Development Council (VPDC) is in charge of local government under the Burmese state.

IT WAS A GOOD TIME IN MY LIFE

When I was around twenty-three years old, I got married. My husband’s name is Rashid. He lived near our village, and I knew him before we married because he is my cousin. So his family and my family, they talked about our marriage and they agreed with each other.

I was excited to get married, but I was scared about the NaSaKa.

The government doesn’t allow an Islamic wedding ceremony unless you pay them a lot of money and obtain official permission first.¹⁰¹⁰ If a Rohingya wishes to get married, they have to submit a request to the government and they have to pay money, and then the NaSaKa gives permission papers for marriage. After girls turn eighteen, they have to go to the NaSaKa and say they want to be married. Then the NaSaKa demands bribes with the marriage application. If you have some family members living abroad they will send you some money and then you give the money to the NaSaKa, and the NaSaKa will give the papers. Whoever can pay the money will be able to marry.

A local decree in northern Arakan State mandates that Muslims must obtain official permission to marry. Rohingyas must go though what the Inter Press Service refers to as a “veritable obstacle course” to obtain a government marriage certificate. For more on this, see the “The Rohingya: Stateless People” section of the appendix, pages 478-481.

We have some people in our own community who are informers. They know things in our village and they collect information for the NaSaKa. In the evenings, they enter the NaSaKa camp and they tell everything that they saw inside the village. For example, if one lady is married but she was not allowed to be married, the informer will go and tell the NaSaKa. Then NaSaKa will go to your home and beat you and arrest you. If the NaSaKa enters someone’s home, the neighbors don’t say anything—they just sit. They’re clearly scared. If you can’t pay the bribe for your release, you can go to jail.

When my family and Rashid’s family had agreed about our marriage, my mother and my uncles went to talk to the VPDC chairman. He assured them that he would arrange everything with the NaSaKa officer in charge to obtain the marriage authorization. Later, the VPDC chairman demanded money from my mother to bribe the NaSaKa officer. The VPDC chairman also took my photograph to submit with the application. The chairman prepared the rest of the necessary documents to be deposited at the NaSaKa camp. The chairman did not take all the money at one time; my mother paid him in installments, as the chairman kept asking for more money.

I don’t know how much money my mother paid for the application, but it was a lot. She initially sold one bullock and paid the money from the sale to the VPDC chairman; then she sold our second bullock and again paid the money to the chairman. One day the chairman delivered a paper and told us it was the marriage permission. Then my mother sold her last bullock and used part of the profit to pay the chairman; she gave the rest to my uncle so that he could buy the dowry items for the marriage: a mat, a pair of pillows, a trunk to keep my clothes in, and also some new clothes for me and for Rashid. My mother also bought three or four kilograms of beef from the market so that she could offer food to the guests at the wedding. I was scared about the NaSaKa, but I felt very excited about the ceremony.

Finally, we got married to each other. I was about twenty-three years old; my husband was about twenty-two. I don’t remember the exact year. Both families invited their relatives and provided food for the ceremony, which lasted one day. About twenty people came to each set of in-laws’ homes. Our relatives and neighbors came to our homes and brought ornaments, earrings, nose rings, and necklaces. They made me wear them and I was totally dressed up. I was obliged to wear the veil as well. We then called the maulvi, who leads the mosque, to perform the religious marriage ritual. He recited some verses of the Koran, and then finally we were married.¹¹¹¹ After the wedding, my husband’s family came to take me. I was in a good, happy mood. It was a good time in my life.

Maulvi is an honorific title given to Sunni Muslim scholars.

MY LIFE WAS ALWAYS AT HOME

After I was married, I went to my husband’s house and started leading my life over there. I lived with his extended family, ten or twelve people. I got up very early in the morning to say my prayers and then start cooking. My main work was only cooking, nothing else. I would cook fish and rice, and then sometimes I would go out to fetch water. My life was always at home—because I was married, I had to stay at home according to Muslim law. My husband and his father would go out to chop wood, and we survived on their very small salary.

For me to be a good Muslim, I need to sit five times a day in prayer. I need to recite the Koran and read from the Kalimah, which is from the Koran.¹²¹² Muslim women are not allowed to go to the mosque, so they say their prayers at home.

Kalimah literally translates as “the word.” Affirmation of the Kalimah is the first of the five pillars of Islam. One commits through reciting the phrase, “There is no god but Allah, and Mohammad is his prophet.”

From the time when we are twelve, thirteen, or fourteen, we are obliged to wear the veil. When I wore the veil for the first time, I just stumbled. That was at first, but later I got used to it. In Burma, we must take the veil and an umbrella when we leave the house.¹³¹³ It is a big training. It took me about two years to get used to it.

It is common in Burma for men and women to use an umbrella to shield themselves from the sun.

People say that if you don’t wear the veil, you are not a good Muslim woman. If you want to keep with your religion, it is very important that you wear it.

IF YOU WANT CHILDREN, WE’D BETTER LEAVE THE COUNTRY

About six months after Rashid and I were married, I became pregnant. Just at the time when I found out I was pregnant, some neighbors who were also married compared my marriage permission paper with theirs. We realized that mine was not genuine—my family had been cheated. My mother went many times to visit the VPDC chairman, but he simply said the NaSaKa officer had been transferred, so we had to reapply for permission. My mother had already sold everything, so she had no money left to apply for permission again.

I heard that many people got punished by the NaSaKa because of unofficial marriage, and that the NaSaKa summoned women to their camp when they suspected they were illegally married—the proof was usually pregnancy or the birth of a child. I had no other option except an abortion. I was already four months pregnant when my neighbor helped me and brought a root from a local midwife.¹⁴¹⁴ I paid the midwife for her help.

According to the Arakan Project, abortions are usually performed by local midwives using a stick or a concoction of herbs. The tablets commonly used by Rohingya women for their abortions are smuggled from Bangladesh to Burma.

I was scared—some women had died trying to have abortions. But the root worked within one night and my pregnancy was aborted. I was unable to walk and unable to eat. I felt guilty, and then I started experiencing problems. Everything, even breathing, made my whole body very weak and vulnerable. It was terrible, really horrible.

In my culture it’s a big expectation for women to have children. This was supposed to be my first child, but in Burma I just couldn’t afford to have any children. It was horrible for me. I did it because I was scared about the NaSaKa. If the NaSaKa comes to know that you’re pregnant, they will come and demand money, because then they know that you are married without their official permission—then my husband could be sent to jail. They will torture you. So I was obliged to abort the child.

According to my religion, it is not right to abort children—it’s a big sin. I think that according to the Buddhists, it’s also not good. The NaSaKa knows about the abortions, so why do they behave as they do? I don’t know exactly; I don’t know what is in their hearts. The NaSaKa are Burmese people, but I think perhaps they don’t want the Muslim population to increase—perhaps they only want the Buddhist population to increase.¹⁵¹⁵

The Rohingya have been subjected to myriad policies that isolate them from the rest of the Burmese population. For more on these policies see the “The Rohingya: Stateless People” section of the appendix pages 478-481.

I became pregnant two more times in Burma. I aborted the second pregnancy within three months and the third pregnancy within less than two months. I got tablets from the doctor those two times because using the roots was painful. They are Muslim doctors, so they do not tell the NaSaKa. If I went to the Rakhine doctors, they surely would have informed on me. The tablets took more than one day to work.

At that time, we didn’t know about condoms because we had no education about that. Now we know about them, so we are using them.

I would like to mention one thing—sometimes my husband would get very angry and hit me. “Why don’t you give me a child?” he’d say. The beating was not so serious; my husband would slap me on the cheeks and say, “I cannot give you everything because I don’t have much more money. I cannot pay for you any more.” I would ask him why he beat me. I told him that he knows about the NaSaKa, that he is scared of the NaSaKa too and this is why I needed to abort the preganancies. He was furious, because he had to pay money each time I aborted a child. I would also be sick for several months after each abortion. For this reason, my husband felt annoyed. He was stressed because of me.

I didn’t say anything when he did that, but at that time, I felt like leaving him. But I didn’t leave, because that is not allowed according to our custom. I was with my husband and I didn’t go anywhere.

Finally I told him, “If you want children, it would be better if we left the country.”

THERE IS A BOAT TO BANGLADESH

The NaSaKa can torture people and demand bribes for any reason they want. I got married according to my Islamic law, but the NaSaKa came and took my husband away because we did not have a genuine marriage permission document.¹⁶¹⁶

According to the Arakan Project, the male in the couple is generally prosecuted under Penal Code Section 493 “for marrying a woman by deceit” which prescribes a sentence of up to ten years imprisonment, but average prosecution is four to five years.

Just after my third pregnancy, a local informer had gone to the NaSaKa to denounce our marriage. It was midnight when the NaSaKa came to my in-laws’ house with the sein gaung.¹⁷¹⁷ My husband and I were sleeping when they ordered us to open the door, and I immediately went to hide in another room.

The sein gaung is a local leader of ten houses, reporting to the VPDC chairman.

We didn’t answer, so they broke down the door. They had guns and weapons. They found my husband alone in the room. The NaSaKa and the sein gaung looked for me but did not find me. Then they took my husband away with allegations of illegal marriage. His mother ran after the authorities, begging them not to take him away. My parents-in-law tried to take him back from the NaSaKa but failed.

Rashid was detained in the NaSaKa camp for two days, and he was beaten and interrogated. Then he was sent to the Maungdaw detention center while the authorities investigated whether or not he was illegally married.¹⁸¹⁸ While he was in detention, he was forced to work a lot and he got many injuries.

According to the Arakan Project, he would have been held in a detention center for pretrial detention. Bribes are demanded to avoid prosecution and secure release.

After my husband was released from jail, we decided to flee to Bangladesh. He said if we stayed in Burma, it would have to be without ever having children. There is a boat that takes people to Bangladesh; we only had a little money, so my husband went first. Since we didn’t know how we would survive in Bangladesh, he said he would call for me once he had settled down and found work. It was also safer for us to go separately, because the NaSaKa would arrest us and send us to jail if they suspected we were traveling.¹⁹¹⁹ We had to be very careful because there were informers for the NaSaKa around the village.

For more on restrictions to Rohingyas’ movement in Arakan state, see appendix pages 479-480.

I HAD NO EXPECTATIONS AT ALL THAT THEY WOULD BE FAIR

After Rashid left, I left my in-laws’ home and returned to my mother’s house to start living with her again. A month or so passed and I received a message from a person in my village who had secretly visited Bangladesh. He said that he’d spoken with Rashid and learned that he was trying to settle in Teknaf.²⁰²⁰

Teknaf is a town in southeastern Bangladesh, which borders Burma.

Then one night, another NaSaKa officer came to my mother’s home and started knocking. I took some time to open the door because I had been sleeping. One of the NaSaKa soldiers broke down the door and he said, “You took too long to open the door,” and then he kicked me on my thigh. I fell down and they started beating me. There were about eight to ten men altogether. The officer said, “You don’t have the marriage document,” and he tried to get more money from us, but we didn’t have any. If they feel like torturing any family, they will do it with any cause, whether it’s fair or not.

They searched our house and our yard and asked about Rashid. They also opened my trunk to see if there were any of Rashid’s clothes or belongings. The NaSaKa men grabbed me and my mother begged them not to take me away. She asked them why they were taking me, and they replied, “The other officer took her husband, so now I will take his wife.” My mother tried to run after us and stop them, but they just beat her. She is over sixty years old.

During the arrest, I just stayed silent and let them do what they wanted; I knew there was no point in begging. I let it be. I had no expectations at all that they would be fair.

That night they took me to the NaSaKa camp. On the way to the camp, they started touching my body. When we arrived at the camp, three or four drunk NaSaKa guys attacked me. They brought me to a little room with tin walls and locked me inside. I was thinking that the NaSaKa was going to send me to jail, or torture me or rape me.

They didn’t say anything to me at the NaSaKa camp, but I don’t understand their language anyway because I speak Bangla.²¹²¹ I just sat like a ghost. They beat me, they tortured me, and then they raped me—I didn’t do anything. I just kept silent.

Rohingya people speak a dialect of Chittagonian, a language of southern Bangladesh. Educated Rohingya people also speak Burmese.

The morning after my arrest, my mother was going mad, and she immediately went to see the VPDC chairman. He told her not to worry because the NaSaKa wouldn’t find evidence of my illegal marriage since I did not have a baby and Rashid was not there. But he said the NaSaKa arrested me because an informer had denounced me, and so they would surely demand some money for my release. The chairman went to the NaSaKa office, and then he told my mother they demanded 200,000 kyats.²²²² My mother sent me food and water, but I didn’t take the food, only the water. I had been tortured again and again, so I’d completely lost my appetite.

Approximately US$200.

There were more than fifteen soldiers involved in assaulting me—each night, different people came. They raped me again and again in the night, and even in the daytime. I said to the Almighty, “Why, Almighty, did you send me here?” I couldn’t stop crying. I didn’t understand what had happened to my life.

My mother informed the local Muslim villagers about the danger her daughter was in, and my in-laws, my uncles, and some villagers at the central mosque gave my mother some money to help. I didn’t know what would happen to me. If my mother was able to get the money, I knew I could leave. I sat crying, only crying and crying. I was raped constantly every day. When the NaSaKa men raped me, I felt as if vultures were biting me all over my body and that they would bite me until I died.

It took three days for my mother to collect the money, and then she went to the NaSaKa and paid. When they let me leave, they just said “Okay, go.” But I was unable to walk. My family members—my brothers and my mother—had to carry me. Seeing them, I felt like I’d been given a new life. My mother asked me what had happened to me. I explained, and they cried. Then my mother said, “You can’t live here; you must leave this place.”

What happened to me is common. So many Muslim woman have been tortured by them. If you have money, you can get tortured less. If you don’t have money, you get tortured. I don’t know why they do this—only the Almighty knows.

I was so tired and exhausted, and I had not eaten during the three days in detention. I stayed at home for a long time and tried to regain my mental strength; I had been tortured so much that I had fallen sick. It was fifteen days until I could walk again and take a little food. After a month, I decided to join my husband in Bangladesh. My mother managed to collect some money and she gave this to me. I walked to the river to take a small ferry boat to the Bangladesh side of the river. From there I had to take a bus to Teknaf, where I thought I would find Rashid.

I DIDN’T WANT TO DIE IN BURMA

I didn’t feel sad leaving Burma; I was thinking about how it would be in Bangladesh. I wondered how I would find my husband. While traveling, I was thinking that Bangladesh is a Muslim country and that we are Muslims—I thought, Muslims like other Muslims. I thought that if you go to Bangladesh, you get a better life, better than in Burma. This was my thinking.

I gave 2,000 kyats to the fishermen in Min Ga Lah Gyi.²³²³ They had a boat and carried me and some other passengers from the Burma side to the Bangladesh side. I took my clothes, but I could not take luggage because if I did, then the Burmese government would have arrested me—they would have known I was traveling from Burma to Bangladesh.

Approximately US$2.

I was scared coming here, because I didn’t have any relatives in Bangladesh—I just knew that my husband was here. I also thought about how the NaSaKa could torture me, so I prayed to the Almighty to let me die in Bangladesh, not in Burma.

When I arrived in Teknaf, I didn’t look for my husband straightaway. First, a woman gave me shelter in her room and arranged a job for me grinding spices in a restaurant. Then I tried to find Rashid but he was not there. A month later, a group of Rohingya women left to go to Nazirartek in Cox’s Bazar.²⁴²⁴ They advised me to accompany them because the wages were far better in Cox’s Bazar, where a woman can earn up to 100 taka a day.²⁵²⁵ I went with them and I rented a room with other women in Nazirartek. I found a job sorting fish, but the employer only paid 60 taka per day.²⁶²⁶ I asked the people there, “Do you know Rashid? He has come to Bangladesh and he is my husband. I am looking for him.” One person I knew from Burma said, “Yeah, Rashid lives here. He is at sea with a fishing boat.”

Nazirartek is a sea town in the Cox’s Bazar district of Bangladesh.

Approximately US$1.40.

Approximately US$0.85.

I waited fifteen days, and finally the boat came in with my husband. Finally, I had found him! I was excited to see him. My husband felt very surprised when he saw me. He said, “I thought you were in jail!”

After we found each other, we stayed in Nazirartek for six months. My husband didn’t allow me to work, so I just stayed home and cooked food while he worked. It was a happy life for me. But when there was an increase in our rent, my husband couldn’t afford to pay it, so we moved back to Teknaf. But the rent was a burden for us there as well, so when we heard that a makeshift camp had started in Kutupalong, we decided to go there.²⁷²⁷

Kutupalong makeshift camp started growing in early 2008. According to the Arakan Project, as the camp’s population increased, the Bangladesh authorities began to destroy sections of the makeshift camp on three occasions during June and July 2009.

WE ARE LIVING IN HELL HERE

We moved to the Kutupalong makeshift camp two or three years ago. We knew how to come to this camp because there were a lot of people gathered here. On the way here, I was crying because we didn’t have shelter.

Initially I raised a shanty on the hill, but the Bangladeshi officials demolished my hut and others’ huts as well.²⁸²⁸ Then I rebuilt again a bit further away, but when they officials found out, they came once again and destroyed the house. The Bangladeshi officials destroyed our hut three times, and each time we just waited. When they went away, we started building again nearby, in a different section of the camp.

According to MSF (Doctors Without Borders), “The Rohingya population at the Kutupalong camp have been told that they cannot live next to the official refugee camp, supported by the Bangladesh Government and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Nor can they legally live on adjacent Forestry Department land.” Houses were destroyed to create a corridor between the official camp and the makeshift camp.

The Bangladesh Forestry Department says this is their property, and since this is their property they can destroy our house. When they come, we don’t say anything. We say we don’t have any property, we just have dishes and jars, so we just take these and we go away. The three times that my house was destroyed, I thought, I will go. Because today I make it and tonight they break it. It was really horrible. We couldn’t endure it. Sometimes we felt like committing suicide, thinking, What can we do? Where will we go?

After the third eviction I met a registered refugee who said, “If you want somewhere to stay, there is a place where we plant vegetables and you can stay over there. But you have to pay 200 taka.”²⁹²⁹ Because we live on this land now, the registered refugees cannot plant vegetables here anymore—and if they don’t plant, they can’t earn money. So if we want to stay here, we have to pay them 200 taka.

Approximately US$2.85.

We paid the money to the registered refugees; we don’t know if they are leaders or not. That’s why I’m here today, and why we made this house here, near the latrine. To make my house, I just collected wood from the forest. I bought the plastic material leftover from rice bags at the market, and then I used it to make the house. Each piece of plastic was 6 taka.³⁰³⁰ We don’t have much money to make our house, and I’m not able to build two shacks. When the rain comes, rain will fall into the house and we have to let the soil dry. We just make a ditch and drain the water out, and then we rebuild our hut again when the sun comes.³¹³¹

Approximately US$0.10.

For more on conditions in the camps, see page 476 of the appendix.

The registered refugees look down on us and make some problems for us. They have latrines, but they tell us that we are not allowed to go there. We live near the registered camp, but in order to use the toilets, we need to pay ¼ kilogram of rice each month.³²³² The registered refugees can come to the unregistered camp if they wish, but we cannot use the facilities in the registered camp unless we give them rice. If our little children go to the registered camp and cause any trouble, then the registered adult refugees come to the unregistered camp and beat the adults. If they come here and start to beat us, we don’t tell anyone; we just stay silent because we know we don’t have any protection or identification.

Payment is to offset the costs of cleaning.

If we go outside of Kutupalong, then other people can catch us and we’ll have nothing. We can’t do anything. We are scared of the Bangladeshi authorities. Even the registered refugees have told the police to break our homes. We are living in hell here—our homes are always broken, we are always starving. But it is still better than living in Burma.

HARDLY ENOUGH FOR THE FAMILY

I live with my husband and two nieces in Bangladesh. The girls are fifteen and eleven. My older sister and her husband died, and so my nieces came here just a year ago and found me. I need another shack for my nieces; we do not have enough space. My younger niece is now in another house doing household work. My older niece will soon be married off to another camp resident. I feel good about them living with me; they’re very good to me.

It is difficult for us to work in Bangladesh because people know we are Rohingya—they think the Rohingya are occupying their land and causing problems and crime. They think we are going to steal their work and destroy their forests.

Rashid has always been sick, even before our marriage. Now he hardly works three or four days a week. If he worked seven days a week, he would become sick. He always suffers from fever. In Bangladesh, while collecting firewood in the hills, he once put something inside his ear because his ear was itching, and that object got stuck in his ear. Since then, he often feels severe pain and he has become totally deaf. I took him to an MSF clinic, but they only gave him some painkillers.³³³³ Now I have to look after everything and support my family. I often go to the hills to collect firewood with my niece, and that is my main livelihood. What Rashid earns is not enough for the family.

Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) is an international medical and humanitarian aid organization.

I felt comfortable when we first came here because we had a way to earn money through cutting wood. But now, when more people started coming—other people from Bangladesh or Burma—the Bangladeshi officials came to know about it and they sometimes come and arrest unregistered refugees.

For this reason, I am unable to provide more support to my niece. That’s why I must have her do other work.

I have a lot of problems living my life here, so it would be better if I could get UNHCR registration.³⁴³⁴ If foreigners can help to make Burma pacified, peaceful, it’s okay—the registration is not important. But because my country isn’t peaceful, it is very important to be registered. If Burma becomes a country like Bangladesh, for example, and I get the opportunity to go back, then I can go to your home and you can come to mine. But in Burma right now, we can’t do this.

According to the Arakan Project, in Bangladesh, the 28,000 Rohingyas still remaining in two camps are recognized as refugees and benefit from limited protection and assistance by UNHCR. However, it is estimated that up to 200,000 more live outside the camps. See appendix page 476 for more details.

If we get human rights, then we will go back to Burma. Or we can go to another country and it will be better. Otherwise, we’ll die here.

DO NOT SEND ME BACK

Last year, I went to the MSF clinic and found out I was three months pregnant. All the medicine I’d taken for the abortions had caused a lot of health problems for me, but then I took some different medicine and I felt like I could become a mother. Before, there were a lot of problems that caused quarrels between my husband and me, but now it’s okay.

While I was pregnant, the Bangladeshi authorities arrested my husband when he was in Ukhia, on his way to work. My husband and thirty-one other residents of the makeshift camp were arrested by the Ukhia police during the crackdown. They were all sent to Cox’s Bazar. They put him in jail for three months. It was very difficult for me to survive during that time. Even though I was pregnant, I went outside to work in local cultivation. I was paid 25 taka per day, and I worked right up until I gave birth.³⁵³⁵ It was so difficult, and it wasn’t safe for me, but if both of us couldn’t work then our baby would have really suffered.

Approximately US$0.35.

I was so sad when Rashid was arrested, because I thought he would be repatriated—everyone said prisoners were being transferred back to Burma. I informed Rashid’s mother about his arrest. Rashid’s parents had fled to Bangladesh too, and his father had died at the Dumdumia Tal; his mother then got a room at the relocated site in Leda.³⁶³⁶ She had 1,000 taka and she borrowed 2,000 taka by pawning her registration card and book provided by an NGO. She gave the 3,000 taka to a lawyer, who managed to release Rashid on bail.³⁷³⁷ I really did not expect that he would be released early, but luckily my mother in-law was able to help him.³⁸³⁸

Like Kutupalong makeshift refugee camps, Dumdumia and Leda are both unofficial refugee camp in the Cox’s Bazaar District of Bangladesh.

1,000 taka is approximately US$15; 2,000 taka is approximately US$30; 3,000 taka is approximately US$45.

If convicted for illegal entry in Bangladesh, Rashid would have faced indefinite detention, as Burma usually does not readmit Rohingya. Some prisoners in Cox’s Bazar jail have been there for nearly twenty years.

Now my baby girl is twenty-five days old. I really hope Allah will let us live in this country forever instead of in Burma. I know Burma is our country, but we can never go back unless we are treated like citizens. We don’t even dream of living peacefully in another country; now we just dream of being registered refugees.

If an NGO or the UN could help me, I need food and I need materials for my house.³⁹³⁹ I need a blanket. If my baby gets wet from the rain then I do not know what will happen, she is so young and I am very scared what will happen to her. If my husband goes out for work and earns money, then we can have food. But if my husband can’t work, then we don’t have food and we have to starve. Today we haven’t had any food since the morning.⁴⁰⁴⁰

The two NGOs that work to serve the needs of the Rohingya refugees living in Fatima’s area are Islamic Relief, an international NGO that works to empower local communities to overcome poverty and Muslim Aid, founded by Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) to do similar work.

In 2009, MSF (Doctors Without Borders) found that 90 percent of those living in the makeshift camp were severely food insecure. See appendix page 478 for more on the Rohingya living in exile in Bangladesh.

When we were in Burma, it was a difficult time for us. When I think about what’s happening in my country, I feel like crying. In our country, we have no safety, we have no security. The rulers of Burma are good to other groups, but not to Muslims. It’s no problem if people call us Rohingya, because we are Rohingya—but we are Burmese people too. We are Burmese Muslims.

Now that we are here living in Bangladesh, it’s like an open sky. We feel much better here than in Burma. Even though it is just a hut that we have, it feels like our house. I think we’ll get peace here. My request is to not be sent to Burma; I do not believe there will be any change there. Even my brothers have fled to Bangladesh now, though I have not found them yet. Only my mother remains in Burma. But my future is up to God Almighty. And what the Almighty will give away, I will take.

¹ According to a 2009 report from Human Rights Watch titled “Perilous Plight: Burma’s Rohingya Take to the Sea”: “The Rohingya are descended from a mix of Arakanese Buddhists, Chittagonian Bengalis, and Arabic sea traders… Centuries of coexistence with Arakanese Buddhists was bifurcated by British colonialism, when the boundaries of India and Burma were demarcated. As a result, the Rohingya became a people caught between states, with the majority situated in newly independent Burma in 1948.”

² Kutupalong’s makeshift camp population was over 30,000 in early 2010, but according to the Arakan Project it is now reduced to under 30,000.

³ The NaSaKa, an acronym for “Nay-Sat Kut-kwey Ye,” is a border task force established in 1992 under the direct command of the SPDC. They are frequently cited for human rights violations against the Rohingya.

⁴ For more on the Rohingya’s official status in Burma, see the section “Rohingya: A Stateless People,” pages 478-481 of the appendix.

⁵ Approximately US$1.50.

⁶ The salat-l-janazah is the Muslim funeral prayer. The community gatherers and the imam (prayer leader) is present.

⁷ 50 kyats is approximately US$0.05; 25 kyats is approximately US$0.025. 500 kyats is approximately US$0.50.

⁸ NaTaLa is the acronym for the Ministry for Development of Border Areas and National Races. Model villages created by the SPDC in Arakan State are built through the confiscation of Rohingya lands and with Rohingya forced labor, with the intention of further displacing Rohingya communities.

⁹ The Village Peace and Development Council (VPDC) is in charge of local government under the Burmese state.

¹⁰ A local decree in northern Arakan State mandates that Muslims must obtain official permission to marry. Rohingyas must go though what the Inter Press Service refers to as a “veritable obstacle course” to obtain a government marriage certificate. For more on this, see the “The Rohingya: Stateless People” section of the appendix, pages 478-481.

¹¹ Maulvi is an honorific title given to Sunni Muslim scholars.

¹² Kalimah literally translates as “the word.” Affirmation of the Kalimah is the first of the five pillars of Islam. One commits through reciting the phrase, “There is no god but Allah, and Mohammad is his prophet.”

¹³ It is common in Burma for men and women to use an umbrella to shield themselves from the sun.

¹⁴ According to the Arakan Project, abortions are usually performed by local midwives using a stick or a concoction of herbs. The tablets commonly used by Rohingya women for their abortions are smuggled from Bangladesh to Burma.

¹⁵ The Rohingya have been subjected to myriad policies that isolate them from the rest of the Burmese population. For more on these policies see the “The Rohingya: Stateless People” section of the appendix pages 478-481.

¹⁶ According to the Arakan Project, the male in the couple is generally prosecuted under Penal Code Section 493 “for marrying a woman by deceit” which prescribes a sentence of up to ten years imprisonment, but average prosecution is four to five years.

¹⁷ The sein gaung is a local leader of ten houses, reporting to the VPDC chairman.

¹⁸ According to the Arakan Project, he would have been held in a detention center for pretrial detention. Bribes are demanded to avoid prosecution and secure release.

¹⁹ For more on restrictions to Rohingyas’ movement in Arakan state, see appendix pages 479-480.

²⁰ Teknaf is a town in southeastern Bangladesh, which borders Burma.

²¹ Rohingya people speak a dialect of Chittagonian, a language of southern Bangladesh. Educated Rohingya people also speak Burmese.

²² Approximately US$200.

²³ Approximately US$2.

²⁴ Nazirartek is a sea town in the Cox’s Bazar district of Bangladesh.

²⁵ Approximately US$1.40.

²⁶ Approximately US$0.85.

²⁷ Kutupalong makeshift camp started growing in early 2008. According to the Arakan Project, as the camp’s population increased, the Bangladesh authorities began to destroy sections of the makeshift camp on three occasions during June and July 2009.

²⁸ According to MSF (Doctors Without Borders), “The Rohingya population at the Kutupalong camp have been told that they cannot live next to the official refugee camp, supported by the Bangladesh Government and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Nor can they legally live on adjacent Forestry Department land.” Houses were destroyed to create a corridor between the official camp and the makeshift camp.

²⁹ Approximately US$2.85.

³⁰ Approximately US$0.10.

³¹ For more on conditions in the camps, see page 476 of the appendix.

³² Payment is to offset the costs of cleaning.

³³ Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) is an international medical and humanitarian aid organization.

³⁴ According to the Arakan Project, in Bangladesh, the 28,000 Rohingyas still remaining in two camps are recognized as refugees and benefit from limited protection and assistance by UNHCR. However, it is estimated that up to 200,000 more live outside the camps. See appendix page 476 for more details.

³⁵ Approximately US$0.35.

³⁶ Like Kutupalong makeshift refugee camps, Dumdumia and Leda are both unofficial refugee camp in the Cox’s Bazaar District of Bangladesh.

³⁷ 1,000 taka is approximately US$15; 2,000 taka is approximately US$30; 3,000 taka is approximately US$45.

³⁸ If convicted for illegal entry in Bangladesh, Rashid would have faced indefinite detention, as Burma usually does not readmit Rohingya. Some prisoners in Cox’s Bazar jail have been there for nearly twenty years.

³⁹ The two NGOs that work to serve the needs of the Rohingya refugees living in Fatima’s area are Islamic Relief, an international NGO that works to empower local communities to overcome poverty and Muslim Aid, founded by Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) to do similar work.

⁴⁰ In 2009, MSF (Doctors Without Borders) found that 90 percent of those living in the makeshift camp were severely food insecure. See appendix page 478 for more on the Rohingya living in exile in Bangladesh.