3 January 2024 09:29 am Views - 156
By Awarjitha Edirisooriya
Nearly 100 Rohingya refugees in Sri Lanka have expressed fear for their future as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has decided to close its office. A group of Rohingya refugees representing nearly 100 refugees living in Sri Lanka at present staged a protest in front of the UNHCR office in Colombo yesterday, and they urged that a permanent solution be given with regard to their settlement. Until then, they be given an allowance to live and also allow them to stay in the country, the group urged.
“As Sri Lanka will not give us citizenship and allow us to stay here permanently, our main hope is that UNHCR will help us find permanent resettlement in another country. We appeal to UNHCR not to abandon us and help us find a permanent solution in another country that will help us overcome uncertainties and not make us and our children permanently stateless,” the group stated in a petition handed over to the UNHCR Representative in Colombo.
The group of refugees had been rescued by the Sri Lanka Navy in December 2022 and initially, they had been sent to a Detention Centre in Colombo. However, they had been given refugee status by the UN agency and allowed to live until their future was decided. Originally fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh, the group had fled Bangladeshi refugee camps and hired a boat to flee to Indonesia. Sri Lanka Navy had found them while they were stranded in the boat.
Human Rights attorney Suren D. Perera told Daily Mirror that the Sri Lankan government has the responsibility to keep them and facilitate them until UNHCR resettle them in another country permanently.