Escaping pain

THE atrocities inflicted on the Rohingya — the world’s “most persecuted community”, according to international organisations — have been recognised as genocide by a number of countries. But justice continues to elude this minority ethnic community from Myanmar’s Rakhine State, and there is no end in sight to their years-old tragedy. Recently, some 250 people, including children, went missing after a boat carrying Rohingya refugees and Bangladesh nationals capsized in the Andaman Sea. Windstorms, choppy waters and overcrowding sank the trawler, says the UN refugee agency. The vessel was heading to Malaysia from southern Bangladesh. The accident reflects the “dire consequences of protracted displacement and the absence of durable solutions for the Rohingya”. Annually, thousands of people belonging to this Muslim community travel illegally in fragile vehicles to escape repression in Myanmar. Last May, 427 died at sea in two shipwrecks off the Myanmar coast.

For years, the Myanmar authorities have resorted to violence against the Rohingya and deprived them of citizenship, rendering a whole community stateless. Conciliatory measures are rejected and the Rohingya continue to be brutalised by state authorities who embarked on their genocidal killing in 2017. Thousands have been killed to date and over a million Rohingya have fled, mostly to Bangladesh. The UN must intervene effectively. Now as humanitarian aid dries up, climate emergencies turn intense and frequent, and global economies decline, it is crucial for the international community to take up this cause before fresh instability costs more lives. Life in the refugee camps is both severe and dependent on aid for even basic needs. It worsens when host nations prohibit Rohingya from work and education. Crisis is normal for the group; suffering of unspeakable proportions has plagued them for too long and they must not be abandoned again. The world’s commitment determines the ferocity of future shocks.

Published in Dawn, April 16th, 2026

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