Bangladesh News

Nurbanu still wears the traditional Myanmarese attire of a thami and a kameez, she has not yet learnt to manage a long sari Bangladeshi women wear.

She has been living in a rented hut in a slum of Samitipara in a suburb of Cox’s Bazar, since she entered Bangladesh seven months ago crossing the border near Teknaf.

She is one of the illegal Rohingya immigrants in Bangladesh, the number of whom already reached 3 lakh according to unofficial estimates.

When this correspondent requested Mizanur, a local young Bangalee man, for an introduction to a recently migrated Rohingya family, he showed the hut where Nurbanu lives.

Nurbanu came from Koinnyong village of Bhuchidong district of Myanmar. Her son, Mohammed Zaber, a rickshaw puller in Cox’s Bazar town, had come to Bangladesh about five years ago, and managed to bring her mother and siblings over just seven months ago.

The Rohingyas living in Cox’s Bazar, Bandarban and Chittagong districts claim they fled persecution in Myanmar.

“Nasaka used to torture us. They used to force us into free labour, and used to collect tolls from us,” said Nurbanu in her mother tongue while Mizanur interpreted for this correspondent.

Some of them had come twenty years ago, like Aziz Sardar of Samity Para who already became a voter too, while some others came only recently, with many others still pouring in searching for safety.

“They keep coming. Many were repatriated from the refugee camps earlier just to bounce back, some of them are now living here in the communities,” said an official from the office of Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner (RRRC).

Monzur Alam Bhuiyan, deputy commissioner of Cox’s Bazar, said they do not have an exact number of Rohingyas living outside the official refugee camps in small communities scattered through the region.

“We don’t deal with them,” he told The Daily Star, when asked about unregistered Rohingyas.

Local residents said Rohingyas come mainly through the Teknaf border.

A journalist from Teknaf said if a person is willing to spend Tk 100, he or she will be able to cross the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. The rate is fixed, he added.

“If anybody wants to cross the border, he or she on an average has to pay 50 taka to BDR, 40 taka to police and 10 taka to local goons,” said the journalist requesting anonymity.

Once in Bangladesh territory, freshly migrated Rohingyas generally go to their relatives or compatriots for shelter.

In ‘Pradhaner Dali 50 Colony’, a community of unregistered Rohingyas in Pradhaner Dali slum where 50 Rohingya families live, all came from Bhuchidong district of Myanmar.

“The Rohingyas living outside the official refugee camps create more problems than those who live in the camps,” said Md Abdur Shukur, a resident of Cox’s Bazar.

“It is really a burning issue for the residents of this region,” he added.

In 2005 the government took an initiative to find out the actual number of Rohingyas living outside the camps.

A source in the district administration office said, with the help of local administrations they found around 98,000 Rohingyas living outside the camps.

But other sources including the RRRC office said, the real number of unregistered Rohingyas is no less than 3 lakh, around 2 lakh of whom are living in Cox’s Bazar.

For the 23 lakh original residents of Cox’s Bazar, two lakh Rohingya guests who are showing no sign of leaving, are fast becoming ‘unwanted’.

Talking to local politicians, RRRC officials, journalists, lawyers, businessmen and also working class people, The Daily Star came to understand that Rohingyas amount for around 10 to 12 percent of the current Cox’s Bazar population.

Most of them work on fishing trawlers and in wholesale fish markets, while some others also work as rickshaw pullers, plumbers, masons and as day labourers.

Earlier, people of North Bengal used to migrate to Cox’s Bazar in search of work in the fishing sector, lately the Rohingyas have replaced them.

“They are much cheaper, so everybody wants to employ them,” said a local businessman.

But they also have a tradition of working as foot soldiers of Islamist politicians during elections.

Islamist parties and politicians pay the hapless rootless immigrant Rohingyas, who are overwhelmingly Muslims, to join Islamist election rallies and processions.

“The Rohingyas get support from Islamist politicians as they are considered a vote bank by those politicians,” said a left leaning political leader of Cox’s Bazar.

Besides, many Rohingya immigrants get involved in petty crimes, sources in Cox’s bazaar police station said.

Right now there are around 3,000 inmates in Cox’s Bazar jail, 600 of whom are Rohingyas including seven women.