KUTUPALONG, Bangladesh: Thousands of Rohingya Muslim refugees on Saturday marked the one-year anniversary of the attacks that sent them fleeing to safety in Bangladesh, praying they can return to their homes in Myanmar and demanding justice for their dead relatives and neighbours.
More than 15,000 gathered in the morning on a hilltop in the Kutupalong refugee camp, part of a sprawling web of settlements that are now home to nearly 900,000 Rohingya who have fled Myanmar to escape violence.
Many wept as they recalled the brutal killings and rapes inflicted on the Muslim minority last year as they fled across the border.
The biggest refugee camp in the world is rigidly controlled by Bangladesh authorities and the peaceful but the highly charged Rohingya marches and rallies seen there were unprecedented.
A local police chief, Abul Khair, told AFP that an estimated 40,000 refugees attended marches and rallies across the camps.
The camps exploded in size last year after the Myanmar army launched a wave of anti-Rohingya attacks on Aug 25, with some 700,000 Rohingya eventually pouring across the border. Thousands were killed in the violence.
“25th August — Black Day”, one banner declared.
The protesters — men, women and children — marched through the muddy camp, chanting slogans such as “No more genocide, we want justice.” At a mass prayer rally, one speaker repeatedly shouted, “Who are we?” to which the crowd responded in chorus: “Rohingya! Rohingya!”
Most people cried as they raised their hands while an imam who led the prayer sought God’s blessings, saying, “Please consider the people who have been killed as martyrs and place them in heaven.”
Some of the protesters carried paper flags of Myanmar. Newly setup shops inside the camp were closed during the protest, which lasted several hours.
Also on Saturday, some 100 protesters from a group of nongovernment organisations formed a human chain in front of the national press club in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, to demand the international community put pressure on the Myanmar government to try those responsible for murder, rape and arson, the English-language Daily Star newspaper reported.
“We are Rohingya, we are Muslims, we have been driven away from our land, from our homes,” an unidentified speaker told the crowd on Saturday. “We want justice. We want to go back to our homes.”
But many doubt they’ll ever be able to return despite more than a year of talks among Myanmar, Bangladesh, the United Nations and international aid agencies. Myanmar insists the Rohingya can return, and has built a series of camps for them, but few believe they would be safe there, or that they could finally be accepted as citizens.
While Rohingya have lived for centuries in Myanmar, they have long been treated as outsiders, Muslims in a largely Buddhist nation who are denied citizenship and many basic rights. Many in Myanmar ridicule them as “Bengalis” who came illegally from Bangladesh.
Most live in poverty in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, just across the border from Bangladesh. Over the past couple of decades, over 100,000 have fled into Bangladesh in earlier waves of violence. In total, more than 1 million Rohingya refugees currently live in Bangladesh.
In an editorial on Saturday, the Daily Star was critical of Myanmar for its failure to make any visible progress in taking the refugees back over the last year, while it urged the international community to take action.
“We reiterate our call to the international community, particularly the UN, to investigate allegations of crimes against the Rohingya people because the Myanmar government has shown little interest in bringing those responsible for such violations of human rights to justice,” the editorial said.
“It is time to tell the Rohingya that they are not a forgotten people,” it said.
The violence began on Aug 24, 2017, with a series of attacks on Myanmar police stations by a small Rohingya militant group that killed a dozen security personnel. In retaliation, the Myanmar military and Buddhist mobs launched waves of attacks, killing people and emptying villages in what many in the international community see as a calculated attempt to drive the Rohingya from the country.
The militants, known as the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (Arsa), said on Saturday that they acted to “defend” the Muslim group from persecution.
It is unclear whether Arsa has any broad support after its role in sparking the humanitarian calamity that has befallen the Rohingya.
In a statement marking the anniversary, the group said it had “the legitimate right” to protect the Rohingya and ensure their “return to our ancestral land with safety and dignity”.
Fewer than 200 Rohingya have returned to Myanmar in the past year while the vast majority refuse to return without assurances of their safety.
But Dhaka has insisted that the Rohingya will not remain in the camps for long.
Drug smuggling and human trafficking has plagued the nearby town of Cox's Bazar as its population has ballooned, with gangs preying on desperate refugees, selling young women into the sex trade and recruiting mules to move methamphetamine.
The Arsa statement Saturday urged refugees to refrain from “indulging and trading in drugs, human trafficking and violence”.