Fears grow President Donald Trump’s Myanmar visa restrictions will stop people from the persecuted Muslim ethnic group entering the US
Lila Mubarak, right, smiles after taking the Oath of Allegiance during a naturalisation ceremony at the Everett McKinley Dirksen US courthouse in Chicago, the US on February 10 2020. Picture: AFP/KAMIL KRZACZYNSKIA refugee from Myanmar’s tyrannised Rohingya minority, Lila Mubarak embodies perfectly the “poor, huddled masses” welcomed to the US for more than a century by a bronze plaque at the foot of the Statue of Liberty.
President Donald Trump’s inclusion of Myanmar beginning on Friday on a list of countries with harsh US entry restrictions has laid bare the frailty of the community’s prospects for peace. At its height, the Rohingya population numbered about 1.3-million in Myanmar, a small fraction of the country's mostly-Buddhist population of 54-million.The estimated 600,000 that remain in Rakhine state live in what Amnesty International calls “apartheid” conditions with virtually no freedom of movement or access to jobs, education or health care.
The centre’s director, Nasir Zakaria, who escaped Myanmar as a 14-year-old by paddling to Bangladesh, says the Rohingya love their adoptive community, which has the familiarity of village life back home.“We just want to live like other people. We want citizenship rights, freedom of religion, freedom of speech. We want to live together with other groups here in peace and harmony. That’s it.
Effectively putting a halt to entries from those nations, it is not supposed to bar refugees fleeing persecution, the state department told AFP.
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