No place like home
Persecuted and pushed out, the Rohingyas of Myanmar's Sittwe city have lost everything in the latest waves of violence to sweep Rakhine State. Words and pictures by Greg Constantine
“This is the spot where my family’s house used to be,” he says, pointing to a cracked slab of concrete on the ground.
Once home to more than 20 Rohingya families, the area around Mohammed’s old house hugs the border of the Muslim quarter of Aung Mingalar, in the city of Sittwe, in western Myanmar’s Rakhine State.
In June, ethnic clashes between Buddhists and the Muslim Rohingya erupted in Rakhine, unleashing a tide of destruction and displacement primarily in and around Sittwe. During that wave and a second in late October, some 170 were killed, more than 100,000 – mostly Rohingya – were displaced and thousands of buildings were destroyed. “I don’t like coming here because my brother was killed in the violence,” says Mohammed. “There is nothing left, almost all of them were forced to leave Sittwe. Now, most are living in the IDP [internally displaced persons] camps.”
In the mornings and late afternoons, the streets surrounding Aung Mingalar bustle with bicycles and trishaws carrying Buddhist students. Less than a kilometre away, in the heart of Sittwe, the main markets along the Kaladan River teem with Buddhist merchants and porters. Even though Muslims have lived in this historic port city for centuries, today they are nowhere to be seen.
The entry points to Aung Mingalar are manned by soldiers sitting behind barbed-wire barricades. The 8,000 or so Rohingya who remain inside are unable to leave for fear of being attacked, and deliveries of food, fuel and other supplies are being turned back by their aggressors. Rohingya stalls in Sittwe’s main market have been boarded up or confiscated. Rohingya day labourers have grown desperate from the absence of work and Rohingya students haven’t sat in a classroom for months.
The Rohingya have lived in Rakhine (historically called Arakan) for generations but the authorities reject their presence, saying they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Refused citizenship and stateless, some 800,000 Rohingya in Myanmar have been denied almost all rights and have been subjected to any number of abuses. As a result, waves of Rohingya have fled Myanmar. Some 300,000 currently live in Bangladesh and, each year, thousands pay brokers to smuggle them by boat to countries across Southeast Asia.