Burma’s persecuted Rohingya People
The Rohingya people of Burma’s Arakan State are some of the worlds most persecuted people. Having lived in Burma for centuries, they have little to no rights and cannot own land, marry, or travel without permission. They have been beaten by police and jailed for little or no reason.
“In 1992, 250,000 Rohingyas, which is a third of their population, fled over Burma’s border into Bangladesh to escape the persecution. Fourteen years later more than 20,000 of them are still in the same refugee camps and around 100,000 more are living illegally in the surrounding area.” – BBC.co.uk
The Rohingya people claim that the conditions of these camps are harsh, with not enough food for survival. They cannot leave the camps, for fear that they will be beaten by local villagers.
In Thailand, he Bangkok House Committee have evidence proving that human traffickers within Tailand are responsible for an influx of the Rohingya people in to Thai borders. Jehraming Tohtayong, the House Committee chairman, claims that the human traffickers are scamming the Rohingya refugees into believing that Thailand is a stopping off point before traveling onto a third nation. However, police have found that migrants have telephone numbers of fellow Rohingya that are already settled on Thai soil, as reported in the Bangkok Post.
