The first group of Rohingya Muslim refugees arrived in England this week.
About 34 refugees from Nayapara and Kutupalong Rohingya refugee camps left Dhaka for resettlement in England on December 7, at about 8 am (local time), said a refugee named Kasim from Nayapara camp.
First, a little background. Over a year ago we received information that the US State Department did not want to be coerced into resettling Rohingya refugees. Here is the first post I wrote on the subject. You will see that some Rohingya are involved with terrorist groups. I have followed the progression of this story in our category Rohingya Reports ever since.
So far we know that Rohingya, with the help of a very aggressive public relations campaign, have been resettled in Canada and New Zealand (and now the UK) as summarized in this article. We also know they are in Norway but not sure how they came to be there.
The resettlement programme was started from 2006 and Canada was the first country to accept Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh. About 42 Rohingya refugees went to Canada from 2006 -2007.
[….]
The first batch of 23 Burmese refugees this year included men, women and children who were resettled in New Zealand in June.
This is a humanitarian gesture and an attempt to seek a durable solution for about 27,000 Rohingyas in two camps in Cox’s Bazaar—Nayapara and Kutupalong.
[…..]
The UNHCR has actively promoted resettlement in third countries for Rohingya refugees for whom no other solution is viable. “We have been heartened by the humanitarian gesture of countries such as Canada, UK and New Zealand who have accepted a small but important number of refugees for resettlement in their countries. Resettlement is one of the durable solutions for refugees”, said Ms. Pia Prytz Phiri on June 20, on World Refugee Day.
We keep hearing suggestions that the Rohingya are already in the US and that they came through Burmese Karen (Christian) camps in Thailand disguised as Karen. My sources told me there is tension among the Burmese Muslims (presumably Rohingya) and the Karen in some resettlement cities in the US.
However, here is a comment received from reader Nerd 12 at this post which suggests they are indeed here already. Nerd 12 says everything is going just great between the Karen Christians and the Muslims.
Actually, I know many Muslim Burmese through the resettlement process. They get along just fine with the Karen. The explanation for their refugee status is that they are rejected by most groups and and claim no territory, unlike the Karen (who have the only active resistance against the ethnic Burmese gov’t and would like their own sovereign state), Chin, Kachin and other ethnic groups. There was a mislabeling in the camps of the Muslisms as Karens, and I am not sure if that is because the came from the Karen territory inside Burma, direct mislabeling of the Muslims by their own design (I doubt this one highly after meeting them), or a processing decision made by the OPE to categorize them as Karen for whatever reason. There could be a few reasons the OPE would do this intentionally, I don’t have time to get into the rationale entirely.
Nerd 12 indicates that the Burmese Muslims “claim no territory” which makes me think there must be another group of Burmese Muslims, but I have not heard of them before. The Rohingya most definitely claim territory, or at least the right to live in Rakhine State in Myanmar.
Anyway, this is all very puzzling. We already know that Overseas Processing Entities screwed up and allowed Somalis to enter the US fraudulently, could this mean that they are doing the same with the Rohingya Muslims either accidentally or on purpose?
So, let’s just stop all Muslim immigration to the US, just to be on the safe side!