Myanmar’s Persecuted Rohingya Join Balkan Route into #Europe
Persecuted for decades, members of Myanmar’s Rohingya ethnic group are now turning up on the Balkan route for migrants and refugees trying to reach Western Europe.
“Army people were torturing my family,” Ali Mulla began his story. “That’s why I couldn’t live anymore in Myanmar.”
Mulla, 17, spoke in a refugee and migrant camp near the northern Serbian town of Kikinda, some 7,000 kilometres from the home he fled in Southeast Asia.
Stateless and persecuted in Myanmar, in 2017 some 700,000 Rohingya fled in the face of a military crackdown, joining many who fled earlier bouts of repression.
Most are housed in sprawling refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh, but now a few have joined the long road to Western Europe carved through the Balkans by refugees and migrants from Asia, Africa and the Middle East since 2015.
Mulla was one of three Rohingya in the Kikinda camp near Serbia’s northern borders with European Union members Hungary and Romania.
Besides the three in Kikinda, Serbia’s Commissariat for Refugees says it has registered only four other Rohingya, in the summer of last year.
The Rohingya themselves say they were among 30 who entered Serbia two months ago.
Mulla left Myanmar in 2009, the 2017 crackdown only the latest chapter in decades of repression against the Rohingya, a mainly Muslim ethnic group effectively denied citizenship in Myanmar under a 1982 law.
Mulla and his family first moved to Bangladesh before travelling through Pakistan and eventually reaching Turkey. There, he said, he lost touch last year with his family – his parents, four brothers and two sisters.
“I was looking and searching for six months”, he said, without success. Someone told him they had perhaps gone to the EU. Mulla chose to try too. “Maybe I go,” he said. “Maybe I’ll get my family.”
Long road to Europe
Rights groups have documented mass killings, sexual violence and widespread arson among atrocities committed against the Rohingya by Myanmar’s security forces. The Myanmar government has dismissed the allegations, saying the army in 2017 was responding to attacks by Rohingya militants.
In July, the United States imposed sanctions on Myanmar’s top general and three senior military officers, accusing them of human rights violations against the Rohingya.
Mulla now shares the Kikinda camp with two other Rohingya – Omar Farur and Jahur Ahmed – and some 200 other refugees and migrants mainly from Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Serbian authorities say roughly 20,000 migrants pass through Serbia every year. According to the latest figures, some 3,000 are living in Serbia waiting for their chance to reach the EU.
Ahmed, 29, first became a refugee in 1994 when his family settled in Bangladesh. Seven years ago, he travelled to India but soon became a target of mafia racketeering.
“I went then in Pakistan, but too much mafia,” he said.
From Pakistan, Ahmed travelled to Iran and then Turkey. Like thousands of others trying to reach Europe, he crossed from Turkey to Greece by boat before heading north through North Macedonia and into Serbia.
He estimated the journey had cost him between 1,700 and 2,000 euros.
Ahmed and Mulla both said they hoped to reach Germany, but had yet to try their luck crossing the border between Serbia and Croatia that has become notorious for the heavy-handed tactics used by Croatian police to deter migrants and refugees.
Their compatriot, 24-year-old Farur, broke down telling his own story.
Farur said most of his family had been killed or detained in Myanmar. He fled in 2017, crossing India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and Greece. He worked for a couple of months in each country – for example in an oil factory in Turkey – to earn money for the next leg of the trip but that his funds were running low.
Asked if he ever planned to return to Myanmar, Farur replied: “There is no home in Myanmar anymore. It is lost. Crashed. Army crashed it”.
▻https://balkaninsight.com/2019/08/02/myanmars-persecuted-rohingya-join-balkan-route-into-europe
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