Jammu, Dec 5 (IANS): Six-year-old Tasleema is nobody's 'laadli beti' (beloved daughter). She has no idea of the horrors her parents have been through. Worse still, she has no future as she belongs to one of the nearly 650 families of Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar living in this Jammu and Kashmir winter capital since 2008.
Molvi Yunus, 39, is a Rohingya Muslim refugee living with his family in Jammu's Narwal area where a stinking slum sans any civic facilities has come up. The 'jhuggies' (structures made of bamboo sticks wrapped on the sides and the top by a polythene cover) are what these refugee families call their homes.
Around 6,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees live at different places in Jammu city.
There is no drinking water, no electricity, no toilets and no healthcare facilities for them and yet the refugees thank God because they believe their lives are 'safe'.
"I crossed into Bangladesh from Burma (Myanmar) when persecution of Muslims became unbearable. From Calcutta I shifted with my family to Delhi where I begged for food to keep myself and my family alive," Yunus told IANS as he narrated his story.
"It was in Delhi that I met a Kashmiri who told me J&K was a state in India where Muslims lived in majority. I came here in 2008. Buddhists and Muslims fought together for Burma's independence. Just two years after 1948, one of our senior community leaders, Abdul Razak was murdered, under a conspiracy. (Courtesy of daijiworld.com)
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