Myanmar’s Persecuted Rohingya Join Balkan Route into Europe

Mulla was one of three Rohingya in the Kikinda camp near Serbia's northern borders with European Union members Hungary and Romania.

Ali Mulla at Kikinda refugee camp. Photo: BIRN

Besides the three in Kikinda, Serbia's Commissariat for Refugees says it has registered only four other Rohingya, in the summer of last year.

The Rohingya themselves say they were among 30 who entered Serbia two months ago.

Mulla left Myanmar in 2009, the 2017 crackdown only the latest chapter in decades of repression against the Rohingya, a mainly Muslim ethnic group effectively denied citizenship in Myanmar under a 1982 law.

Mulla and his family first moved to Bangladesh before travelling through Pakistan and eventually reaching Turkey. There, he said, he lost touch last year with his family - his parents, four brothers and two sisters.

"I was looking and searching for six months", he said, without success. Someone told him they had perhaps gone to the EU. Mulla chose to try too. "Maybe I go," he said. "Maybe I'll get my family."

Long road to Europe

Rights groups have documented mass killings, sexual violence and widespread arson among atrocities committed against the Rohingya by Myanmar's security forces. The Myanmar government has dismissed the allegations, saying the army in 2017 was responding to attacks by Rohingya militants.

In July, the United States imposed sanctions on Myanmar's top general and three senior military officers, accusing them of human rights violations against the Rohingya.

Mulla now shares the Kikinda camp with two other Rohingya - Omar Farur and Jahur Ahmed - and some 200 other refugees and migrants mainly from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Ali Mulla, Omar Farur and Jahur...