Page 126 - Beautiful Rohingyas

124 Beautiful Rohingyas

Neither can the attitude toward Rakhine people of Islamic
countries even be described as "friendly." They do not want to see
their brothers in faith on their territory and refuse to offer them a

helping hand. For example, some 3,000 Rakhine families living in
prisons around Mecca and Jeddah are being forced to return to their
homes. Men are housed separately from women and children in
these prisons, meaning that families are broken up. Women are only
able to contact their husbands by mobile phone.

The 250,000 or so Rakhine Muslims living in the shanties of
Mecca are forced to work as unskilled manual laborers, cleaners or

drivers. Some families marry under-age girls off to Saudi men.
However, these girls are almost always despised as second-class
wives in their new social surroundings. 4

Some 300,000 Rakhine people in Bangladesh live in refugee
camps where they are deprived of infrastructure and of even the
most basic human necessities, such as hygiene, health, education,
housing, clean water, food and clothing. Even while putting up with

these difficult conditions, the Rakhine people are still being forced
to return to their home country by the Bangladeshi authorities.

Bangladesh applies various forms of psychological and physi-
cal pressure to send these wretched people back. Those who are
unwilling to go back are threatened with imprisonment, their food
ration books are confiscated, and they are maltreated or else their

huts in the camps are damaged: In short, the despairing plight of
Rakhine people leads to their rights being violated.
Here we need to remind ourselves of one very important point;

the countries in question may very well find themselves facing vari-
ous difficulties because of the heavy flow of refugees. However, our