Photo Essay : Anxious Wait for Myanmar Refugees

In a string of squalid refugee camps in a forsaken corner of Bangladesh, the Rohingya people are steeling their nerves for a journey home. Many of them wish the time had not come.

The Muslim Rohingyas fled their villages in the state of Arakan in neighboring Myanmar, a largely Buddhist country, more than two years ago, claiming that they were driven out by pillaging troops. Now they are caught in the middle, wanted neither by Bangladesh nor Myanmar (formerly Burma). Some are resisting repatriation.

“We had a good life in Arakan,” recalled Nabir Hossain, a former schoolteacher, who crossed the border with his daughter. “We were poor, but we had our own land and we could always grow enough rice to feed ourselves.”

The military raids overturned his existence, Hossain related, saying his wife was abducted by the marauding soldiers. “This is the most difficult decision of my life,” he lamented. “I know I may never see her again, but we can’t go back there--not now.”

But many Rohingyas will be leaving the camps in coming weeks under a new program hammered out under heavy Western and United Nations pressure. In all, more than 250,000 left their homeland, and about 53,000 returned under earlier programs.

The authorities in Myanmar initially resisted repatriation efforts, at one point claiming that the Rohingyas were Bangladeshis living illegally in Arakan. They have now agreed to cooperate with the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to arrange an organized return.

The refugees will not find life the same when they go back, say Rohingya spokesmen and aid workers. Since the refugees left their villages, Myanmar has encouraged settlement there by Buddhist Arakanese families, and tension between the two groups is likely to grow as more Rohingyas return.

But life has not been easy in the camps in the Cox’s Bazar region of Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest countries whose government is wary of the Rohingyas’ pressure on scarce resources.

The refugees’ future, if they return to Myanmar, is not clear.

“Every day in the camps, somebody comes to me and asks, ‘Can you tell me about the situation in my village. Is it safe to go back?’ ” said a Bangladeshi named Shabir, an aide in an UNHCR transit camp. “What can I tell them? Nobody here really knows.”

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Photos and text by CHRIS COUGHLIN