SITTWE, MYANMAR - Ayub Khan sits crosslegged on the bamboo floor of his family’s small shelter and gestures at a meter-high stack of simple pharmaceuticals, such as cough syrup and painkillers.
“I set up a small pharmacy and paid a lot to get these medicines here,” the Rohingya father of eight said. “Before the violence we had three pharmacies in downtown Sittwe. We had a good life, but we lost everything. This business is not sufficient to support my family.”
He said his family now suffers from a lack of livelihood opportunities here in Baw Du Pha Camp 1. At the barren site outside of the state capital Sittwe, some 4,800 Rohingya Muslims displaced by the 2012 clashes with Rakhine Buddhists live in cramped, run-down UN shelters.
Most depend on meager earnings from trishaw driving, hauling goods and fishing, while a few run small shops or work with aid organizations that are active here.
Until last year, poverty, poor living conditions and restrictions on travel and government services motivated thousands of Rohingya—some 120,000 of whom live in camps—to go on a perilous, often deadly, boat journey to Malaysia to find work.
“Nowadays, only a few are going. The main reason is not the danger of the journey, it’s because the NLD (National League for Democracy) took power. Some people hope that the situation here will improve a little,” said Ayub Khan, adding that departures also dropped because the Thai navy cracked down on the people smuggling boats. “When the NLD won the elections, I also got more hope that we could get equal opportunities,” he said.
His remarks represented some of the cautious optimism found among the Rohingya during interviews in Rakhine early last month after the National League for Democracy assumed office.
But these hopes have since been dashed by the controversy over the new government’s request for the U.S. embassy to refrain from using the term Rohingya, and by a recent media report that the government had restarted a contentious citizenship verification process among the Rohingya.
UNHCR’s (the United Nations refugee agency) Myanmar office spokesperson Kasita Rochanakorn confirmed the latter measure with VOA this week, saying, “We have heard from the Myanmar Government that it is resuming the citizenship verification process.” The UN Refugee Agency urged authorities to ensure that the process is “voluntary and consultative, and results in tangible changes in the lives” of those granted citizenship.
With these recent steps, the NLD government continues the stance of its military led predecessor, which rejected demands of the roughly one million stateless Muslims. Most say their families have lived in Rakhine for generations and they want to be recognized as citizens termed Rohingya. The previous government said many migrated illegally from Bangladesh in recent decades and it labelled them “Bengalis”—a view that is being championed by a powerful nationalist Buddhist movement.
Kyaw Hla Aung, a Rohingya community leader from Thet Kel Pyin Village, said that the NLD’s recent decisions had lowered spirits among Muslim communities. “People are very sad now because the NLD did nothing for us yet and they have had no contact with us,” the former lawyer and ex-political prisoner said.
A young Muslim man in Baw Du Pha Camp 1, who asked not be named, said by phone, “People have heard that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi doesn't want to use the word Rohingya—they are now losing their hope for this new government and parliament.”
Rohingya leaders said they were deeply concerned by the resumption of the citizenship verification based on the controversial 1982 Citizenship Law, which excludes any mention of the Rohingya.
Verification was last conducted in 2014 in remote areas of Rakhine, but stalled when Rohingya refused to cooperate as most could only register under the term Bengali. Those who did receive citizenship were reportedly forced to remain in camps and under restrictions.
Kyaw Hla Aung and several other sources in Rakhine said there has been no citizenship verification activities yet, but he warned these would strain relations with authorities. “No one will accept this—on the survey form there are all sorts of questions that imply we are foreigners,” he said.
Recently, Arakan National Party lawmakers representing the Rakhine Buddhist community urged the NLD to resume the verification process, which they believe would see many stateless Muslims turned down for citizenship.