Stateless and Starving

It is always important to note that the ongoing conflict in Burma has impacts that reach beyond the eastern border states.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), a research and aid organization, has issued a report on the plight of Burmese refugees in Bangladesh. Tens of thousands of Rohingya, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority group, have fled into neighboring Bangladesh to escape systematic and widespread human rights violations, including, torture, state-sanctioned rape, and forced labor since 1993. Thousands more streamed into Bangladesh following the bloodily suppressed uprising of 2007.

The Bangladeshi government has denied 200,000 Rohingya arrivals official refugee status, thus making them ineligible for UN aid and protection, as well as giving the Bangladeshi government free reign to detain and expel the unwanted Rohingya. The remaining Rohingya are left in makeshift camps where they face starvation. The Bangladeshi government has blocked aid groups from providing food to the camps since it views them not as refugees, but as illegal migrants that must be repatriated.
 
PHR’s Director of Research and Investigations states, “It is unconscionable to leave this vulnerable population stateless and starving. Thousands of Rohingya who fled intolerable persecution in Burma now face equally bleak conditions in Bangladesh, because the government there has refused to recognize their status as refugees. What will it take to get them the aid they need to survive?”