Refugees from Burma starving in Bangladesh

THOUSANDS of Burmese Muslims who have been living illegally in Bangladesh over the last decade as unlisted refugees are fighting a grim battle against starvation and disease.

"We are just waiting for death that will relieve us of all pains," said Kala Miah, 75. The refugees, who fled west Burma's Muslim-majority Arakan state to escape alleged military persecution and find work, are living outside two official government refugee camps in the Cox's Bazar district, 400 kilometres south-east of the capital Dhaka.

Refugees in Damdamia, 80 km from the resort town of Cox's Bazar, said they had no food except for some rice and wheat handed out by local charities every two or three months, and nothing to drink except rain water.

Three of the refugees have died of hunger in recent months, and hundreds more are suffering from starvation and diarrhoea, fever and skin diseases, they said.

Some 250,000 Rohingyas as Burma's Muslims are known crossed into Bangladesh in early 1992 but most were repatriated by September the same year under supervision of the UN High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR).

The secretive Burmese regime is frequently criticised by human rights groups for its treatment of pro-democracy campaigners and minority groups.

Since then there have been little homeward movement while more Rohingyas have trickled in across the porous 320-km border.

More than 20,000 others now live in the two camps at Kutupalong and Nayapara near Cox's Bazar.

Bangladeshi officials say that most of the Rohingyas are economic refugees, and that the Burmese authorities were not keen to take them back.

"The repatriation process has been very slow over last many years though Yangon kept saying they will take the refugees back. But we are being continuously burdened to host the unwelcome guests," said one Bangladeshi official.

However, members of several Bangladeshi rights groups and voluntary organisations who visited Damdamia on Saturday found conditions for the survivors were miserable.

"The refugees deserve attention and care from both the Bangladesh government and international agencies because no one can deny they are human beings, too," said Kazi Azizul Huq of the Centre for Development Studies.

Despite requests from some international agencies, impoverished and overpopulated Bangladesh has said it will never offer the Rohingyas a permanent home.

The government says it will not open any more camps for them and will try to close the two existing camps as soon as possible.

"There is no-one on earth or in heaven to help us. We have no home, no future and no dream," said Sabura Khatun, 45.