Refugees

Myanmar Refugees Trickle Across India Border

A number of people have begun escaping the turmoil in Myanmar into India, some of them police refusing to take part in the violent crackdown on protests against a military coup there, officials and reports said.Myanmar's junta ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi on 1 February, triggering a mass uprising that the military has responded to with increasingly lethal force.

7 March 2021
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Malaysia Defends Plan To Deport Myanmar Nationals

Malaysia on Monday defended a plan to deport 1,200 Myanmar nationals on navy ships sent from their homeland just weeks after a coup, following criticism from the United Nations (UN).News emerged last week the migrants would be sent home, after the Myanmar military seized power and detained civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi at the start of February.Malaysian immigration chief Khairul Dzaimee Daud said the detainees, who will be deported on 23 February, are accused of offences including not havi

16 February 2021
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Traffickers: Selling False Dreams To The Rohingya

From Rakhine state in Myanmar, the Rohingya are an ethnic community of largely Muslim people. Perhaps a million of them have fled from violence in the ASEAN member state in successive waves of displacement since the early 1990s. In 2017, hundreds of thousands more fled Myanmar to escape persecution, war crimes and alleged genocide. Today, over 900,000 Rohingya live in camps in Cox’s Bazar in southeast Bangladesh – the world’s largest refugee settlement.

16 December 2020
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Rohingya: The Perils Of The Boat People

The plight of the “boat people” has come to the attention of the international community for a long time now. The world thus far has reacted to this cataclysmic humanitarian crisis that is even said to be tantamount to genocide.

16 September 2020
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Terror At Sea: Migrants Tell Of 200-Day Ordeal

When hundreds of Rohingya refugees paid traffickers to escape their squalid camp in Bangladesh, they were promised a new life in Malaysia after just one week at sea.Instead, the group of mostly women and children suffered more than 200 days of terror on the high seas, until they landed this week on Indonesia's northern coast, where they are now back in refugee tents.Beaten by the traffickers, they battled hunger and thirst as storms lashed their wooden vessel, and watched in horror as th

13 September 2020
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Nearly 300 Rohingya Reach Indonesia

Nearly 300 Rohingya migrants reached Indonesia on Monday claiming to have been at sea for seven months, the United Nations (UN) refugee agency said, in one of the biggest such landings by the persecuted Myanmar minority in years.The migrants - including more than a dozen children - were spotted on a wooden boat by locals who helped them land near Lhokseumawe city on Sumatra's northern coast, officials said.But as many as 30 may have died during the perilous high-seas voyage, the UN said,

8 September 2020
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Rohingya Protest Silently On Genocide Anniversary

Almost a million Rohingya refugees stuck in Bangladesh marked three years since escaping from Myanmar on Tuesday, with coronavirus forcing them to hold a day-long "silent protest" inside their flimsy, leaky huts.An August 2017 military operation that has triggered genocide charges at the United Nation's (UN) top court drove 750,000 Rohingya out of Myanmar's Rakhine state into neighbouring Bangladesh, to join 200,000 who fled earlier.Three years later, and with no work or d

26 August 2020
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Refugees Are Essential To The COVID-19 Response

Last month, for World Refugee Day, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) launched its Every Action Counts campaign, to emphasise that all contributions to creating a more just and inclusive world make a difference. Everyone, including refugees, can have a powerful impact on society.

31 July 2020
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Rescued Rohingya Describe High-Seas Terror

A group of Rohingya say they were beaten by traffickers and drank their own urine to stay alive on a perilous four-month journey at sea until their dramatic rescue near the Indonesian coast.The bedraggled survivors - about 100 in all, mostly women and children - described a high-seas horror story that saw them reduced to throwing the dead overboard as their rickety craft drifted thousands of kilometres towards Malaysia.Two survivors claimed that people smugglers paid to transport them had bea

29 June 2020
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Malaysia To Send Back Latest Rohingya Boat Arrivals

Malaysia said Tuesday it will send back hundreds of Rohingya who arrived by boat this week after months at sea, as fears mounted that the refugees could be carrying a new wave of coronavirus.The country is a favoured destination for the persecuted Muslim minority from mostly Buddhist Myanmar, with thousands risking their lives on perilous sea crossings every year.They usually travel from Myanmar or Bangladesh, where about one million live in squalid refugee camps after fleeing a 2017 military

10 June 2020
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Rohingya Reduced To Drug Smuggling

Rohingya refugees fleeing anti-Muslim persecution in Myanmar are being exploited by the Arakan Army to smuggle synthetic drugs into Bangladesh. The army, which is demanding greater autonomy for Myanmar’s Rakhine State, uses money from the drug sales to purchase arms and ammunition. It moves the drugs from production centres in Myanmar’s interior to Rakhine State, where the Rohingya make the arduous trek along refugee migration routes into neighbouring Bangladesh.

31 May 2020
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Race To Stop COVID 'Nightmare' In Rohingya Camps

Emergency teams raced Friday to prevent a coronavirus "nightmare" in the world's largest refugee settlement after the first confirmed cases in a sprawling city of shacks housing nearly a million Rohingya.There have long been warnings the virus could race like wildfire through the cramped, sometimes sewage-soaked alleys of the network of 34 camps in southeast Bangladesh.Most of the refugees have been there since around 750,000 of the Muslim minority fled a 2017 military offensiv

16 May 2020
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