Some of the Myanmar refugee women and children crouch under a water tank for shade.
NEW DELHI: Fifty odd families seek refuge from the searing heat of the Delhi summer under twig-and-plastic-sheet homes clumped together on a patch of wasteland in Madanpur Khadar. Some of the women and children crouch under a water tank for shade. But they're not complaining.
While the Rohingyas of Myanmar's Rakhine province may well be living a dog's life in the slums of Delhi, they believe it's a tad better than being persecuted by the military junta in Myanmar.
TOI visited them in their makeshift homes in Delhi on World Refugee Day and found that Myanmar's nowhere people had nothing to celebrate and nowhere to go.
The complete absence of any semblance of infrastructure meant that Jamila Begum, a woman who looks under 20, gave birth a few weeks ago in the tent she lives in. Others like Mohammad Haroun eke out a living as manual labourers.
Haroun's face takes on a hunted look as he talks of how the Rohingyas are persecuted in Myanmar. "The military would come to the homes of the Rohingya in the middle of the night and rape our mothers and sisters. They would abduct Rohingya men and force them into unpaid labour for days and weeks at a stretch. Their families would not know where they had disappeared," says Haroun.
The Rohingyas are of Indian descent, brought to Myanmar as slaves by the British. "The Burmese junta confiscated our land. They said we were brought here as slaves and could never be owners of land," says Haroun.
He knows he can never go back to Myanmar. But life in Delhi's boondocks gives him little to look forward to. "I've had no piece for 22 years."
The cluster of refugees in Madanpur Khadar are hungry for news of their homeland. They are well aware that their province, Rakhine, is now in the midst of a communal riot between Buddhists and Muslims. "Forty people from my village were killed," said a young Rohingya mournfully.
The Rohingyas hit the headlines a couple of months ago when 2000 of them gathered in the capital desperately seeking refugee status. At present, the Rohingyas only have an asylum-seeker card in India. Without full-fledged refugee status, they say that they enjoy none of the facilities that Indian citizens do and are living in abject poverty. While officials from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees(UNHCR) say that an asylum-seeker card is sufficient for them to avail of India's healthcare and education system, the Rohingyas say this is untrue.
They first camped outside the UNHCR office in Vasant Vihar, but were driven out after repeated protests from residents of Delhi's toniest neighbourhood for whom they were a nuisance. They later shifted to Vasant Kunj, where the police dismantled their shelters, forced them onto buses and asked them to leave the city.
Those who remained behind in Delhi have found temporary shelter in Madanpur Khadar, an area whose residents are too poor to mind their presence. Zakaat Foundation, a voluntary organization, has taken pity on them and provides them food and rations.
Source: here
TOI visited them in their makeshift homes in Delhi on World Refugee Day and found that Myanmar's nowhere people had nothing to celebrate and nowhere to go.
The complete absence of any semblance of infrastructure meant that Jamila Begum, a woman who looks under 20, gave birth a few weeks ago in the tent she lives in. Others like Mohammad Haroun eke out a living as manual labourers.
Haroun's face takes on a hunted look as he talks of how the Rohingyas are persecuted in Myanmar. "The military would come to the homes of the Rohingya in the middle of the night and rape our mothers and sisters. They would abduct Rohingya men and force them into unpaid labour for days and weeks at a stretch. Their families would not know where they had disappeared," says Haroun.
The Rohingyas are of Indian descent, brought to Myanmar as slaves by the British. "The Burmese junta confiscated our land. They said we were brought here as slaves and could never be owners of land," says Haroun.
He knows he can never go back to Myanmar. But life in Delhi's boondocks gives him little to look forward to. "I've had no piece for 22 years."
The cluster of refugees in Madanpur Khadar are hungry for news of their homeland. They are well aware that their province, Rakhine, is now in the midst of a communal riot between Buddhists and Muslims. "Forty people from my village were killed," said a young Rohingya mournfully.
The Rohingyas hit the headlines a couple of months ago when 2000 of them gathered in the capital desperately seeking refugee status. At present, the Rohingyas only have an asylum-seeker card in India. Without full-fledged refugee status, they say that they enjoy none of the facilities that Indian citizens do and are living in abject poverty. While officials from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees(UNHCR) say that an asylum-seeker card is sufficient for them to avail of India's healthcare and education system, the Rohingyas say this is untrue.
They first camped outside the UNHCR office in Vasant Vihar, but were driven out after repeated protests from residents of Delhi's toniest neighbourhood for whom they were a nuisance. They later shifted to Vasant Kunj, where the police dismantled their shelters, forced them onto buses and asked them to leave the city.
Those who remained behind in Delhi have found temporary shelter in Madanpur Khadar, an area whose residents are too poor to mind their presence. Zakaat Foundation, a voluntary organization, has taken pity on them and provides them food and rations.
Source: here
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