June 20. With a certain level of solemnity we have observed the World Refugee Day themed this year: Hope. Now, as if frustrations never give us any break ever, Bangladesh remains a country where plight of the refugees — Rohingyas and Biharis — is embossed on its face like a shameless scar.

Plight of the numberless Rohingya refugees remain one of the most under-reported, mis-reported story of our time. Recently, Irrawaddy magazine interviewed me for their June 2006 cover story. A minor amendment?

The Rohingya Riddle
By Clive Parker/Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh
June 2006

Burmese refugees in Bangladesh are running out of options.

Iman Hussein does not officially exist. But standing less than 100 feet from the Naff River which separates his makeshift refugee camp in the Chittagong Division of Bangladesh from his homeland of Arakan State in Burma, he says there are more pressing concerns for his group of 14,000 refugees: “We are just hoping for assistance,” he says.

In Dhaka, the Ministry for Food and Disaster Management has yet to permit the UNHCR refugee agency to register this group of Rohingyas, thereby denying them food and medical aid. The Burmese Ambassador to Bangladesh, Thane Myint, does not even recognize the Rohingyas as an ethnic group.

“Many people are claiming they lived in Rakhine [Arakan] State a long, long time ago,” he says, chuckling. “Some of them are, or have been, living in Myanmar [Burma]. Some of them may not be [from Burma].”

The Bangladesh government says there are just over 20,000 Burmese people in the area — the number registered officially with UNHCR in two refugee camps south of Cox’s Bazaar. But the Burmese embassy in Dhaka recognizes only 10,000 as citizens of Arakan State. There are many more Buddhist Burmese refugees living illegally in Bangladesh. Those interviewed by The Irrawaddy — both Buddhists and Muslims — gave the same reason for leaving their homeland: they were fed up with human rights abuses inflicted by the Burmese military government.

“Shouldn’t the [Bangladeshi] government ask the question, ‘Why are they here?’ Instead, they ignore the problem,” says Jim Worrall, the head of UNHCR’s Cox’s Bazaar office which overseas nearby Kuta Palong refugee camp and further south, Nayapara.

Worrall says the group of Rohingyas on the bank of the Naff River — the most urgent case — needs “a political solution before we [UNHCR] can do anything for them.”

Read rest of the post here.