(Kutupalong) Tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh demonstrated on Sunday to demand their return to Burma where they fled the repression of the military regime.
Posted at 8:42
“We don’t want to stay in these camps. Being a refugee is hell. That’s enough. Let’s go back home,” said one of their leaders, Sayed Ullah, in a speech.
“More than 10,000 Rohinhyas took part in the rally in the camps under my jurisdiction,” police official Naimul Haque said, referring to the world’s largest refugee camp, Kutupalong.
According to the police and the organizers of the demonstrations, more than a thousand Rohingya demonstrated in each of the 29 unsanitary camps where they survive, crammed under the shelter of shacks made of tarpaulins, sheet metal and bamboo.
Around 750,000 Rohingya fled army abuses in Burma and sought asylum in neighboring Bangladesh in 2017, where there were already more than 100,000 refugees, victims of previous violence.
The Rohingya are demanding to obtain citizenship rights before returning to Myanmar, which is predominantly Buddhist.
In March, the United States for the first time acknowledged that Rohingya had been victims of a “genocide” perpetrated by the Burmese army.
Mohammad Haris says he doesn’t want to “die as a refugee”, before adding: “I want my rights. I want to go home, where I can study and think about my future”.
Last week, officials from Bangladesh and Burma held a meeting by videoconference, the first in nearly three years, and the issue of the repatriation of refugees was discussed.