Arakan News Agency
KUALA LUMPUR, June 19 ― He was forced to leave his wife and three children in the middle of the night, “kidnapped” by the soldiers to be their porter, along with other men from his village in the Myanmar state of Arakan.
Dressed only in his pajamas ― a worn out T-shirt and sarong ― Bua, a Rohingya, had to carry a heavy sack for 10 days through dense jungle, before making an escape with several others.
More than a month later, he finally reached KL.
The 54-year-old has since married an Indonesian national and both have an eight-year-old daughter together. He recounted his harrowing experience in Malay while sitting on a rusty metal swing in front of the corner house where they live in a rented room, in Seri Kembangan.
“We walked through the jungle for 10 days and anyone who cannot keep up, gets beaten and kicked down the hill, some died,” he said.
Today he is unemployed because his right leg was injured when he lost three toes during an accident at the Sungai Buloh factory where he was working three months after he arrived, back in 1993.
Every morning, he walks his daughter to the refugee school for Myanmar Muslims, The Knowledge Gerden Learning Centre about 20 minutes away, because he cannot afford the additional RM75 for the school van to pick her up.
It costs RM50 a month to attend the school, he said.
His wife, meanwhile, works at a shop that sells Chinese wedding items nearby, from 10am to 1pm for about RM500 a month.
He said he has been arrested twice by the Immigration Department and was deported to Thailand. Twice, he made his way back to KL to his family.
“If the Myanmar soldiers saw us, they would have shot us,” he said when asked why he did not go back to Myanmar.
Bua said UNHCR has already interviewed him about three times and was told that he would be resettled in the United States, but he doesn’t know when yet.
Two of his nephews in their 20s who are also here, are working at a tyre shop nearby. Both are still waiting for their UNHCR cards.
Claiming he is a good cook, he said he doesn’t really miss food from home.
“I usually cook a big pot of cabbage, some rice and salted fish.
“We are not starving, but we are barely getting by,” he said, adding that the rented room for the family costs RM250 a month.
“I begged the police to help us. I said, ‘If you don’t, who else will?’”
Another man, Kand, who is in his 30s, also a Rohingya, joined the conversation midway and lamented that he is stuck in a Catch-22 situation.
“How are we going to survive? We can’t work, even with the original UNHCR card, there is no use.
“Not only the immigration officers would detain and deport us, they also warned my boss not to hire us again and threatened them with a hefty fine,” he said, also in Malay.
He works at a night market fruit stall from 4pm to 10pm and earns RM20 a day.
Meanwhile, he said the police officers he met were more merciful and would just let him go after he showed them the UNHCR card.
“I begged the police to help us. I said, ‘If you don’t, who else will?’”
“Finance, study, passport, that’s all we need”
SOURCE : themalaymailonline
