Indonesian students stormed Rohingya refugee centers crying “kick them out”. Hundreds of students rushed in the shelter in the Indonesian city of Banda Aceh, which was harboring several dozen Rohingya refugees.

The incident was denounced by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), which said that a concerted online campaign of hate speech and disinformation was to blame.

“The crowd forced 137 evacuees into two vehicles and drove them to a different area of Banda Aceh after breaking through a police barricade. Refugees are traumatized and startled by the incident, it claimed.

Some 137 migrants were being housed in the hall owned by the government. The migrants should be relocated to a nearby immigration office and subsequently deported, the students demanded.

Who are Rohingya Refugees?

The Rohingya, an ethnic minority of Muslims, for decades, have resided in largely Buddhist Myanmar, which was once known as Burma. They are the biggest stateless population in the world, there are about 1.1 million refugees in the Southeast Asian country. They have lived in Myanmar for many generations but not being accepted as an official ethnic group and denied citizenship since 1982.

Rohingya families are denied fundamental rights and protection due to their statelessness, making them particularly susceptible to abuse, exploitation, and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV).

The majority of this population in Myanmar is restricted to the western coastal state of Rakhine and is not permitted to leave without authorization from the government. It is one of the poorest states in the union, with camps that resemble slums with few opportunities and basic amenities.

Over several decades, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled to neighboring countries by boat or land due to persistent violence and persecution.
“Rohingyas have been living in Arakan from time immemorial,” the Arakan Rohingya National Organization stated, referring to the region that is now known as Rakhine.

A considerable number of laborers from modern-day Bangladesh and India migrated to what is now known as Myanmar during the more than a century of British rule (1824–1948). Human Rights Watch (HRW) claims that because the British governed Myanmar as a part of India, such migration was seen as domestic.
Most of the native people had negative opinions about the laborer migration.

According to a 2000 report by HRW, the government refused citizenship to the majority of Rohingya because it considered the migration that occurred during British rule to be “illegal” after independence.

This has caused many Buddhists to reject the word “Rohingya,” viewing it as a recent political fabrication and instead believe them to be Bengali.

The Myanmar Coop and the Rohingyas’

The Union Citizenship Act, which specified certain ethnic groups may obtain citizenship, was passed soon after Myanmar gained independence from the British in 1948. Those whose families had resided in Myanmar for at least two generations were able to apply for identity cards under the act, nevertheless.

Rohingya were first granted such identification, if not citizenship. Many of them also served in parliament during this period as well.
For the Rohingya, the 1962 military takeover in Myanmar brought about a significant shift in circumstances.

It was mandatory for all citizens to obtain national registration cards. However, they were only issued foreign identity cards, which restricted them access to employment and educational prospects.

A new citizenship rule that was passed in 1982 essentially made the Rohingya people stateless. They were once more excluded from recognition as one of the 135 ethnic groups in the nation by legislation.

The law has limited and still restricts their ability to study, work, travel, marry, practice their faith, and obtain health care. The Rohingya are not allowed to vote, and even if they pass the citizenship test, they will still need to identify as “naturalized” rather than Rohingya. They are also not allowed to run for office or work in certain professions like law or medicine.

Tyrannizing Rohingya’s

The Rohingya population in Rakhine State has been subjected to several crackdowns since the 1970s, forcing hundreds of thousands of them to escape to neighboring Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, and other cities in Southeast Asia. Refugee reports of rape, torture, arson, and murder by Myanmar security forces have been common during these crackdowns.

After nine border police officers were killed in October 2016, the government began sending troops into the villages of Rakhine State, blaming them for being combatants from an armed Rohingya organization. Following this, government troops were accused of a number of human rights violations, including extrajudicial death, rape, and arson—all of which the government refuted—during a security crackdown on their villages.

Human Rights Watch claims that the Burmese government destroyed evidence of atrocities against the Rohingya by demolishing at least 55 villages that were once home to them.
Regions that were once full of structures and greenery had been completely destroyed between December 2017 and February 2018.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) referred to the acts of the security forces in Myanmar as an “ethnic cleansing campaign” and urged the UN and donors to demand that the demolitions stop.

According to HRW, since Myanmar’s military launched a campaign against the Rohingya in August 2017, 362 villages have been totally or partially demolished.

The displaced Rohingya refugees

In Myanmar, the Rohingya have endured decades of persecution, brutality, and discrimination.
More than 1 million Rohingya refugees have fled violence in Myanmar in successive waves of displacement since the 1990s. When a severe wave of violence erupted in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, pushing over 742,000 people—half of them were children—to seek safety in Bangladesh, their greatest migration started in August 2017.

The majority of the more than 960,000 Rohingya refugees residing in Bangladesh are housed in and near the largest and densely populated camps in the world, Kutupalong and Nayapara, which are located in the Cox’s Bazar region of the country.

52% of these refugees in Bangladesh are minors, and 51 percent of them are women and girls. Since 2021, the government of Bangladesh has moved up to 30,000 refugees to Bhasan Char Island in an effort to relieve congestion in the 33 camps in Cox’s Bazar. There are still large gaps in service delivery and the sustainability of vital support, even though protective services and humanitarian aid have increased on the island.

In addition, around 92,000 Rohingya refugees have sought asylum in Thailand and 21,000 in India; fewer migrants have settled in Indonesia, Nepal, and other nearby countries.

The In acceptance of refugees

Leaving their homeland after years of trauma and inacceptance wasn’t enough. The Rohingya refugees have further had more frowns to be considered a burden in the camps they take abode in. Be it Bangladesh or Indonesia, both the Muslim mojaority nations are giving quite a hard time to the displaced nationals.

Rohingyans’ are facing trafficking, extortion, gang violence, and lack of physiological and psychological well-being. From fleeing to Indonesia, taking sea routes, and then being man handled there in the name of a burden. Aceh Province in Indonesia has seen plenty of chaos since November this year, where many boats with refugees were asked to return back after sailing aimlessly in the sea for weeks.

Many migrants claim to have paid amounts in thousands to be saved from the traumatizing scenarios in the refugee camps. But the pointless migration to a land of nowhere seems to be gaining its momentum.

Although the UN agency is coming to the humanitarian aid but despite being surrounded by lands and territories where do the Rohingyans’ go for their final abode?

Water, Water, Everywhere but not a drop to drink- Samuel Taylor Coleridge