Thousands of Rohingya are believed to be trapped in the path of cyclone Mahasen in northern Rakhine state of Myanmar as the storm heads for land.
The Rohingya Muslims, internally displaced persons (IDPs), have been displaced since they were targeted in pogroms that the rights group, Human Rights Watch (HRW), described as “ethnic cleansing.”
The watchdog believes that as many as 70,000 people could be stuck in cyclone-susceptible areas without evacuation or adequate shelter.
“Aid workers and Rohingyas said coastal camps with tens of thousands of displaced people had not been evacuated as of May 14 and in some cases Rohingya were for unknown reasons being moved closer to the sea,” said the HRW in a statement.
A major problem is not only that the Rohingya are housed in makeshift camps since spates of violence targeted them on racial and religious ground sin June 2012 but they also face severe official difficulties just travelling between towns.
“Even if Rohingyas want to leave coastal villages, they cannot due to travel restriction,” said a field monitor from the Arakan Project, a local rights group.
Meanwhile, an NGO worker who wished to remain anonymous, visited unregistered camps on May 13 near the Rakhine state capital of Sittwe said: “We've covered the area of at least 15km and we haven't seen a single indication of preparation nor any international organisation's staff. When we asked people if there's anyone informing them about the situation or advising them on what to do, they said no one was informing them about anything.
“When asked what they will do once the storm comes, they say: ‘We will try to desperately hold on to our tarps.’”
Amnesty International’s Deputy Asia Pacific Director Isabelle Arradon said: “The government has been repeatedly warned to make appropriate arrangements for those displaced in Rakhine state. Now thousands of lives are at stake unless targeted action is taken immediately to assist those most at risk.”
Cyclone Mahasen is due to make landfall on Thursday morning near the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, which is where the embattled Rohingya minority traditionally resides. Even before last summer’s deadly pogroms concern had long existed however.
“The military has effectively sealed the Rohingyas off from the world and keeps them at the bare subsistence level – it is an internment camp,” the US embassy noted in a leaked cable back in 2005.
As a result some Rohingya took matters into their own hands and took to the sea with one vessel carrying over 100 people,which reportedly capsized late on May 13 killing over 20 of those on board.
“It appears that this boat left the camp with the blessing of the authorities before hitting rocks,” Barbara Manzi, country head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told the BBC.
Myo Thant, a spokesman for the Rakhine state government, told AFP: “There are people still living in temporary tents. Now we are moving as many of those IDPs as we can to the stronger permanent shelters.”
However, just as in the Rohingya camps on the Bangladesh side of the border, many of the displaced are unregistered,the HRW noted.
“Among the displaced population are tens of thousands of ‘unregistered’ Rohingya who have not been formally recorded by the Burmese authorities, even though they live in areas where the security forces deny them freedom of movement and their presence is known to the aid community.”
Should they attempt to flee, they “are at risk not only from the cyclone, but from violence at the hands of ethnic Arakanese communities and the very local security forces who were responsible for their displacement in the first place,” said Brad Adams of the HRW in a statement.
The Myanmar government came under severe criticism of its handling of 2008’s cyclone Nargis in which around 140,000 people perished.