The 'undesirables'

A harrowing escape

Aisha Kutun, 45, was one of thousands of women who were separated from their families and brutally raped by soldiers.

Before the attack, she and her husband, a farmer, had built a simple life for themselves and their nine children in their small home in Buthidaung township. 

They lost it all in August 2017 when the military stormed their village of Maung Nu Fara. The military said the crackdown was in retaliation for a series of attacks on about 30 police stations by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (Arsa), an insurgent group that claims to fight for Rohingya rights. 

Ms Kutun’s husband and four of their children – aged between 12 and 22 - were killed by the army. 

“They shot them point-blank. It was a mindless attack without any provocation,” says Ms Kutun, who has since remarried and now lives in Kutupalong with her surviving five children. Her youngest was just six when they fled their home. 

“I ran for my life carrying the smaller children. We took refuge in a temporary shelter in the nearby village, where there were already hundreds of families who escaped similar violence.” 

She stayed there for five days, exchanging harrowing stories with other survivors.  

When the violence had appeared to subside, many families returned to their villages only to find them destroyed.  

“A day later, the military came to the temporary camp we had set up in our village, and gathered all of us in one place,” says Ms Kutun. "They separated men, women and children."

“We were about 45 women and they asked 12 women, who they thought were good looking, to form another group.” 

She was among those chosen and led by soldiers towards the bushes “for questioning”, but they were instead each pinned to the ground and repeatedly raped. 

“I protested when a soldier touched me inappropriately saying he wanted to search my body," she says.

"More men joined him and they asked me to shut up or get killed. I was raped again and again while I kept pleading them to stop." 

In 2019, a UN fact-finding mission determined the military was using rape and other forms of sexual violence as a weapon of war. 

A report issued the year before by the NGO Ontario International Development Agency, estimated that as many as 18,000 women and girls were raped by Myanmar's army and police.

Today, Ms Kutun says she is losing any sense of hope as the perpetrators of her assault are now running the country. 

“I want closure and to see the criminals punished. But the world has forgotten about the crimes against Rohingya,” she says.

Living in the congested camp in Bangladesh, Ms Kutun says her biggest concern is her safety. 

“We fled our home country for safety, but our condition is not better here," she says.

"Criminal gangs are kidnapping children, our men are being attacked and we are targets of sexual violence. We are doomed.”  

With no access to education or employment, and denied the freedom of movement, refugees in the camp are also contending with poverty, malnutrition and exposure to disease.

Dwindling humanitarian funds have further pushed refugees to a corner, forcing many to risk perilous boat journeys to reach neighbouring countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. 

Tensions between Buddhist-majority Myanmar and the country's Muslim Rohingya population began decades ago.

Often referred to as the world’s most persecuted minority, the Rohingya are said to be descendants of Arab traders and have their own language and culture. Many immigrated from India to Myanmar - then Burma - under British rule between 1824 and 1948.

But in 1982, after a new citizenship law stripped them of their national identity, the community lost their basic rights to healthcare, higher education, work and even voting rights.

Violence broke out in the early 1990s, 2009 and 2012 leading to waves of exodus to neighbouring countries – the largest being in 2017 when more than 750,000 Rohingya fled to Cox’s Bazar.

Umme Salam says she was only 18, in September 2017, when she was sexually assaulted and tortured by soldiers during a raid on her village. 

“They barged into my house and asked me to undress. I still shudder when I recall that day,” she says. 

“I started screaming and fighting back and three men dragged me to a room in a nearby house. They held a gun to my head and two soldiers took turns raping me for an hour." 

For years, she never spoke of her ordeal, worried of the stigma attached to a rape survivor. 

“I have not been able to find a husband as I don’t have parents to search for a groom,” she says. 

“For two months after the incident, I lived in fear that I would get pregnant. Luckily, I did not. But I was under treatment because of the internal injuries and was in severe pain,” Ms Salam, now 24, tells The National in her first media interview. 

“Everyone is forgetting who the Rohingya are and what we have endured.”

Ms Salam says she was cared for by a few villagers before she recovered well enough to escape to Bangladesh 

She says many other women in her village faced the same fate as the army marauded village after village looking for people with connections to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army.

“Those days were terrible. People were living in constant fear as the army was hunting down and massacring even innocent civilians including women and children,” says Ms Salam. 

“They burnt down homes including mine. Some women were taken to the forests and raped. Villages found their dead bodies a few days later.” 

She walked three days to reach the Naf river, where she paid boatmen to cross over to Bangladesh and journey on to Kutapalong refugee camp. 

Living in an overcrowded camp teeming with men and without the protection of a family comes with its own challenges, but the thought of returning to Myanmar fills Ms Salam with fear. 

“People are talking [about repatriation]. But how can I go back to the same village where I was raped?” she says.

She hopes the perpetrators will be brought to justice. 

“That is just my hope. Our plight has only worsened in the last five years, and the military is continuing its atrocities.” 

In Myanmar, Rohingya are called 'undesirable Bengalis' while in Bangladesh, they are considered uninvited guests overstaying their welcome as the government desperately tries to repatriate them. 

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina welcomed the refugees on humanitarian grounds and allowed international aid to flow in to support the Rohingya. 

But the government did not expect the crisis to last this long. 

Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, Bangladesh's commissioner for refugee relief and repatriation, tells The National: “When they came, we thought they would return in a few months.
"But nothing has happened and they are losing hope. They are frustrated because they are unable to go home.”  

Jamalida Begum, 34, has lost count of the number of times she has sat down on the dirt floor of her bamboo hut in Cox’s Bazar, recounting the horrific details of her assault by soldiers six years ago. 

At first, the mother of two would cry, then abruptly collect herself, driven by a desire to expose the atrocities she and countless other women endured. Today, she speaks with clinical precision, devoid of any emotional cues that would reveal her frustration and pain. Not because she has overcome her trauma but from a lack of hope that anyone cares. 

“In all these years, I have shared my painful story with aid workers, human rights activists, journalists, and investigators from the International Criminal Court of Justice," Ms Begum tells The National.  

“Nothing has changed. But I keep repeating it so that the world never forgets.” 

The military reached her village, Hadgudgapara, on October 11, two months after the start of the crackdown against the Rohingya in northern Rakhine. 

“They surrounded our village and started firing. They torched all the houses with our belongings. My husband was killed along with many other men,” she says. 

“The following day, they returned with bigger force. A group of soldiers dragged me to a bush and put a gun on my head and asked me to take off my clothes. Those men in uniform took turns and raped me until I lost consciousness.” 

Investigations by the UN and rights groups found Myanmar's troops indiscriminately raped, butchered and shot civilians, including children, in hundreds of villages before burning them to the ground.

In a bold act among a highly conservative community, Ms Begum and other women went public with their stories and told visiting foreign journalists about the rapes and persecution the military unleashed against them. 

“The army came back that night and killed the translator who helped me. They went around looking for me,” said Ms Begum. 

“I hid in the forest for seven days with my two children before I escaped to Bangladesh by boat.” 

She and her two sons sought refuge at Kutupalong.

Even in Bangladesh, Ms Begum says she does not feel safe as she openly advocates for women’s and Rohingya rights. Recently, she took part in protests against the forced repatriation of Rohingya to Myanmar. 

“The same military that ordered rape and killings [of Rohingya] is back in power in Myanmar and I cannot keep quiet,” she says. 

“I will starve in the camp but won’t return to the killing and raping fields in Myanmar. Women will get raped again and again.” 

Ms Begum says she is a target of criminal gangs inside the camp. 

“There is no safety here. My life is in danger, and I had to go into hiding a few months ago. But I will keep fighting until I get justice.” 

What does the future hold for the Rohingya?

In June 2023, tens of thousands of Rohingya protested in Bangladeshi camps, pushing for repatriation to their home country of Myanmar. 

They held signs reading “No more refugee life” and “We want to go home”. 

The UN views a “dignified and sustainable return to Myanmar” as the primary solution to the current crisis. Many Rohingya agree but with the simple stipulation that repatriation be voluntary, and their safety and human rights be assured. 

But whose responsibility is it to protect their rights and ensure safe passage? 

The UN says it should be the “collective goal” of the international community so the Rohingya can return home with the ability to move freely and access documentation, have access to citizenship, services and income-generation opportunities to rebuild their lives. 

But the collective goal also needs collective action, without which retuning home will remain a distant dream for the Rohingya. 

Bangladesh, which is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, is eager to push through a Chinese-negotiated repatriation deal with Myanmar and an initial list of 1,600 Rohingya has already been made for a pilot programme. 

In May, Bangladesh officials, in co-ordination with Myanmar junta authorities, took 20 Rohingya refugees to Rakhine State to visit resettlement camps. 

Pictures released by Human Rights Watch showed the transit camp surrounded by barbed-wire fencing and security outposts, similar to detention camps in the Rakhine state. 

Myanmar’s continuing campaign to issue National Verification Cards (NVCs) that categorise Rohingya as foreign nationals and not citizens is another major barrier. 

Continuing political unrest and violence in Myanmar, where the ruling military regime is arresting and killing pro-democracy protesters, make the country a death-trap for the Rohingya. 

Moreover, nearly 600,000 Rohingya who still remain in Myanmar, continue to live in prison-like internment camps and villages without freedom of movement, as well as access to adequate food, health care, and education. 

According to Dr Ronan Lee, author of Myanmar’s Rohingya Genocide, the only way to ensure the safe return for the Rohingya is regime change in Myanmar.  

“That is what the Bangladesh should demand, and western countries should put pressure to impose sanctions,” says Dr Lee, who is also a Doctoral Prize Fellow at Loughborough University, London.

"The junta that is committing genocide and crimes against humanity is still able to import aviation fuel for air superiority, and countries like Russia and China are selling arms to them."

With conflicts in Ukraine and Sudan drawing the world’s humanitarian attention away from Bangladesh, Rohingya refugees are becoming a forgotten people. 

Recent decisions by the Bangladesh government have only been making life in the camps more unbearable for the refugees – perhaps in the hope that they will leave.  

In March, the World Food Programme reduced the value of food rations to $8 per person per month due to lack of funding, making camp life even more desperate. With no immediate solution to the Rohingya crisis, global efforts are needed to sustained humanitarian aid. 

While the responsibility lies with Myanmar over the safe return of the Rohingya, it is Bangladesh’s humanity that holds their hope and dignity.