A Migrant Mother’s Anguished Choice to Leave One Child Behind in Myanmar

[Jonathan Fairfield]

A Migrant Mother’s Anguished Choice to Leave One Child Behind in Myanmar

By CHRIS BUCKLEY and THOMAS FULLER

GELUGOR, Malaysia — Carrying one child in her arm, a second on her back and holding the hand of a third, Hasinah Izhar waded waist-deep through a mangrove swamp into the Bay of Bengal, toward a fishing boat bobbing in the dusk.

“Troops are coming, troops are coming,” the smuggler said. “Get on the boat quickly.”

If she was going to change her mind, she would have to do it now.

Ms. Izhar, 33, had reached the muddy shore after sneaking down the dirt paths and around the fish ponds of western Myanmar, where she and about one million other members of the Rohingya minority are stateless, shunned and persecuted for their Muslim faith.

She had signed up for passage to Malaysia, but knew that the voyage would be treacherous, that even if she survived, the smugglers would demand ransom before letting her and her children go, and that they sometimes beat, tortured or sold into slavery those who could not pay.

Her husband, who had raised shrimp and cattle, had been among tens of thousands who made the journey two years earlier, after Buddhist mobs rampaged through villages like their own, burning houses and killing at least 200 people. He had warned her not to follow, telling her that the trip was too dangerous and too expensive.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/06/world/asia/myanmar-rohingya-refugee-crisis-malaysia.html?_r=2&referrer=

[Daniel Boon]

the growing number of refugees will continue to escalate ... there is no solution other than mass extinction of the human species