Rohingyas in NCR are safe but miserable

 Jul 9, 2013
Times of India
Ambika Pandit

NEW DELHI: Off the busy Gurgaon-Sohna Road, in a village called Firozepur Namak, stands a cluster of huts housing Rohingya refugees from Myanmar's Arakan region. Its 280 asylum-seekers hope to return home one day but for now they are worried about being evicted from this village that has been their home for about a year. The plot they are squatting on belonged to a doctor but he has sold it, they say. The 65 families have been told to find another place soon after Ramzan.

The strife in Myanmar haunts them as many still have relatives in Arakan. In India, they find themselves cut off from the mainstream as asylum seekers. The Rohingyas have been raising the demand for full refugee status with rights before the United Nations' refugee agency, UNHCR. The last big protest happened in May 2012 when thousands demonstrated outside the UNHCR office in Vasant Vihar in south Delhi.

The Rohingyas justify the demonstration by pointing to the conditions in the settlement. Monday's downpour left the low-lying ground waterlogged. The residents are worried about mosquitoes and sickness as the monsoon breaks in full force over the NCR. Their huts are sturdy but this damp weather makes living in them unbearable.

The men work as day labour. Some earn Rs 300 a day weaving Burmese bamboo huts that have attracted the attention of locals. Some such huts have come up along the Gurgaon-Sohna highway.

The 85 children in the camp have no friends in the village as they speak a different language. Fatima, 10, plays with other Rohingya children around a pool of dirty water. School to her means the two hours she spends in a large hut where the elders teach some Arabic. A boy, Zahidullah, says they just idle away their time all day in the open. They never go out of the bamboo gate that opens onto the road.

Mamun Rafique, chairman of the Myanmar Rohingya Refugee Relief and Rehabilitation Committee, says the families are most worried about the education of their children. "Members of our committee are planning to take the assistance of an NGO to help educate the children. We need to secure their future," Rafique says. He came from Myanmar two years ago with his wife. His parents and daughter are still in Arakan.

On the atrocities that drove them out of Arakan, 55-year-old Shahzan says all their rights, including the right of their children to marry, were taken away. She came to India four years ago. Her son, Mohd Hassan, found his life partner at the settlement and had a traditional nikah in a hut which now also serves as a mosque for the community. Inside this hut one finds dreams of a better life as paper wall hangings crafted like chandeliers dangle from the plastic roof.