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The Forgotten Rohingya: Stuck in Limbo in Myanmar's Prison-Like Camps

VOA News

   Independent human rights groups and journalists are blocked by the
   government from entering the camps or to investigate alleged human
   rights abuses in northern Rakhine State, Myanmar. But VOA managed to
   speak to women inside the internally displaced camps.

   Maw Mura* wrings her hands constantly as she describes her difficulties
   living as a Rohingya woman, in one of Myanmar's forgotten segregated
   camps.

   "Living in the camp is like living in a prison or a chicken coop, it's
   not appropriate for teenagers, married parents and elders to live
   inside a small room," pointing to the clutter of tin roofed shelters.
   Her eyes are empty, there's no anger or fire, just resignation.

   Thirty-seven-year-old Maw Mura has been forced to live in the barbed
   wire confined camps since 2012, after violence erupted in the town of
   Sittwe in western Myanmar. Buddhist mobs took to the streets with
   machetes, burning down houses where Maw Mura's shop was also looted. A
   few months after arriving in the camp, Maw Mura's husband died, leaving
   her to raise her children on her own.

   Some 128,000 Rohingya and other displaced Muslims have been left here
   in the Sittwe camps.

   "I want to go home, we want freedom of movement," says Maw Mura, when
   asked what she wants in the future. Her home inside the camps is a
   small tin and bamboo shelter that has only one room which she has to
   share with another family. This is a situation not uncommon inside the
   camps.

   "Closure of camps" without citizenship breeds permanent segregation
   fears

   This month marks the two year anniversary since more than 700,000
   Rohingya fled to Bangladesh after a brutal military crackdown. For
   those who have remained in Rakhine, they face severe movement
   restrictions and many are confined to a life behind barbed wire fences
   in the Sittwe camps, heavily patrolled by police.

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