The Stateless Rohingya Blog

Kutupalong unregistered Rohingya refugee camp overview in rainy season By KPN  July 08, 2014 Kutupalong, Bangladesh :  Burmese Rohingya refugee who are living in Kutupalong makeshift camp – unregistered camp – are facing hardship for their survival, said a refugee watcher from Cox’s Bazar, named Hamid Husson. In Bangladesh, there are two types of refugees or asylum seekers – one is recognized by state government and another one is not recognized by the government. The unrecognized asylum seekers are living along the border with local people, some are living together in two places – Kutupalong and Lada – as camps, Hamid said. The two camps are not getting any support from government, or other any organizations for not allowing any access by the authority of Bangladesh. So, the asylum seekers from camps are searching for their own sources to survive like engaging in the fields – fishing, agriculture, rickshaw pullers and day laborers, Hamid more added....

When Social Development and Human Security Minister Pavena Hongsakul visited Rohingya boat people at the immigration detention centre in Phangnga last month, she was appalled by their poor living conditions.  To squeeze more than 200 people in a very small space is inhumane, she said. Since it is the same situation for hundreds of Rohingya boat people at police stations in other provinces, she proposed giving   these asylum seekers a more decent temporary shelter by making use of old refugee camps.  Her proposal has been met with silence from the army, the police, provincial and immigration authorities. Given the locals' resistance due to lack of local consultation, it seems the refugee camp idea is over. Interestingly, the offer by local Muslim communities to use their mosques as temporary shelters for the Muslim Rohingya boat people has also fallen on deaf ears. Shortly after Ms Pavena's visit, the Rohingya detainees at Phangnga staged a mass jail break.  R...

Thailand detention centers Bangkok Post August 30, 2013                        The government has agreed to hold about 2,000 Rohingya migrants in detention centres nationwide for another six months, Deputy Prime Minister Pracha Promnok said on Thursday. The migrants were originally due to remain in the centres for six months while the government assessed options for their relocation, but that initial deadline passed last month. The new detention deadline would now end in January. The deputy PM, who oversees national security, was responding to an opposition request for details on the government's policy to deal with the Rohingya migrants. The request was made during a parliamentary session yesterday by Democrat MP for Bangkok Samart Maluleem. Mr Samart said more than 2,000 Rohingya were being detained at immigration detention centres. He said he was concerned by overcrowding in the centres. Pol ...

Children who arrived on a Rohingya boat off Phuket on January 1 Photo by phuketwan.com/file For years, thousands of ethnic Rohingya from Myanmar's Arakan State have set sail to flee persecution by the Myanmar (Burmese) government.  The situation significantly worsened following sectarian violence in Arakan State in June 2012 between Muslim Rohingya and Buddhist Arakanese, which displaced tens of thousands of Rohingya from their homes.  In October 2012, Arakanese political and religious leaders and state security forces committed crimes against humanity in a campaign of ''ethnic cleansing'' against the Rohingya.  During the so-called ''sailing season'' between October 2012 and March 2013, more than 35,000 Rohingya are believed to have fled the country.  International pressure on Thailand to provide temporary protection to Rohingya arriving on its shores resulted in the current detention policy. Since January, more than 1800 Rohingya...

The government must decide quickly on temporary shelters for displaced Rohingya until more permanent solutions are found, a member of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) says.  NHRC commissioner Niran Pitakwatchara said he was concerned the Rohingya currently being detained in Thailand were being deprived of basic rights.  The migrants, many of whom have arrived in southern Thailand by boat this year, have been kept in scattered shelters and detention centres for seven months and the government should now decide what to   do about them, Mr Niran said. The Rohingya migrants are kept in poor living conditions in temporary shelters, and also suffer exploitation by trafficking gangs, and extortion from smuggling gangs, he told a seminar titled: "The Rohingya : Unwanted and Alone in Thailand".  "Though Thailand is not a [UN refugee convention] signatory, state ministries could actually hasten their authority in  providing decent and appropriat...

The Thai government should quickly decide on temporary shelters for displaced Rohingya people until practical longer-term solutions are reached, says a member of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). Dr Niran Pitakwatchara said he was concerned that the Rohingya refugees were being deprived of basic rights while under temporary care in Thailand. After drifting at the sea and being towed into various islands in southern Thailand since early this year, the migrants have been kept in scattered shelters and detention centres nationwide. Now it is time for the government to decide what to do next, said Dr Niran. Thousands of Rohingya Muslims have fled persecution in Myanmar over the past year and many have ended up in Thailand. They faced poor temporary shelter, exploitation by trafficking gangs, and extortion from smuggling gangs during their stay in Thailand, Dr Niran said at a seminar on the refugee problem. He suggested that something could still be done despite th...

Ten Rohingya refugees escaped the Ranong Immigration detention center in a dawn breakout yesterday. Photo: Gazette file PHUKET: Ten Rohingya detainees escaped at dawn yesterday from a detention facility at the Immigration Office in Ranong, the popular visa run destination for many expats and tourists in Phuket. The incident is the latest in a series of Rohingya escapes from various facilities in the past few months. The 10 escapees were part of a group of 118 Rohingya detainees at the facility. The Ranong Immigration Office has begun a manhunt for the 10 runaway Rohingya. "We have handed out their photos to motorcycle-taxi riders, community leaders and local people in a bid to track them down," office chief Ekkorn Bussababordin said, adding that he believed the 10 escapees were still in Ranong. Col Ekkorn said that he would step up security measures at the detention facility to prevent further escapes. Thousands of ethnic Rohingya from Myanmar's Arakan Sta...

PRACHUAP KHIRI KHAN –    A total of 34 Rohingya migrants remain at large after 37 of them escaped from a detention centre in Muang district early yesterday. The detention centre in Prachuap Khiri Khan houses 119 Rohingya. The escape took place around 2am Saturday at the centre in tambon Klongwan, which has two buildings housing 119 Rohingya who were transferred from Phangnga in January. The site is approximately 10 kilometres away from the Sing Khon temporary checkpoint with Myanmar. Weera Sriwattanatrakul, the governor of Prachuap Khiri Khan province, said the security guards at the site had fallen asleep while on duty. More than 200 police and other officials began a search within a radius of five kilometers from the detention site and found three escapers walking along a road. Mr Weera said the government needed to find a solution for dealing with the Rohingya, thousands of whom have fled persecution in Myanmar. Many Rohingya have ended up in Thailand in poor ...

Rohingya Muslim illegal immigrants gather at the Immigration Detention Centre. THAILAND - Ten Rohingya detainees escaped at dawn yesterday from a detention facility of the Ranong Immigration Office. It is the latest in a series of Rohingya escapes from various facilities in the past few months. The 10 escapees were part of a group of 118 Rohingya detainees at the facility. The Ranong Immigration Office has begun a manhunt for the 10 runaway Rohingya. "We have handed out their photos to motorcycle-taxi riders, community leaders and local people in a bid to track them down," office chief Ekkorn Bussababordin said, adding that he believed the 10 escapees were still in Ranong. Ekkorn said that he would step up security measures at the detention facility to prevent further escapes. Thousands of ethnic Rohingya from Myanmar's Arakan State have been arrested in Thailand for illegal entry. In Satun, just two out of 31 Rohingya boys remain in custody at the Sat...

UN News Villawood Immigration Detention Centre outside Sydney, Australia. Photo: IRIN  Australia’s arbitrary and indefinite detention of 46 refugees amounts to “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” the United Nations Human Rights Committee has  said , calling for their immediate release. The refugees, who have been held in detention for at least two and half years, had been recognized as asylum-seekers who could not return to their homes. However, the Australian Government refused to grant them visas on the grounds that they posed a security risk. The 46 refugees – 42 Tamils from Sri Lanka, three Rohingya from Myanmar and a Kuwaiti –were not told the reasons of why they were considered a security risk, and so could not mount a legal challenge to their indefinite detention. “The combination of the arbitrary character of (their) detention, its protracted and/or indefinite duration, the refusal to provide information and procedural rights to (them) and the difficu...

Introduction Beginning in late 1991, wide-scale atrocities committed by the Burmese military, including rape, forced labor, and religious persecution, triggered an exodus of ethnic Rohingya Muslims from the northwestern Burmese state of Arakan into Bangladesh. [1]   Nearly 240,000 refugees, now housed in 19 camps in and around the Bangladeshi town of Cox's Bazar, face the prospect of possible mass repatriation when the 1993 rainy season ends in October. That repatriation would be cause for concern on two grounds. First, though talks have taken place between Burmese authorities and Mrs. Sadako Ogata, head of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) to allow a UNHCR presence inside Burma, no final agreement has yet been reached, and grave concerns remain about military abuses in Arakan and thus about the safety of repatriated refugees. Second, when mass repatriations took place in 1992, they became the occasion for coercion and physical abuse of refugees by Bangl...