By Junaid Dar
Srinagar: For 45-year-old Mohammad Aalam, dismantling his home means facing a question he cannot answer: “Where are we supposed to go now?”
Aalam’s family is among the hundreds of Rohingya refugee families in Jammu who have begun demolishing their huts after their landlords received official notices to clear residential and commercial structures from their plots.
In Narwal, families started dismantling their temporary homes on Tuesday (September 15). They continued on Wednesday and Thursday.
Videos and images circulating online showed Rohingya refugees pulling apart huts. They gathered their clothes and other belongings, as some prepared to leave with whatever they could carry. But where they will go remains unclear.
Mohammad Sabir, a Rohingya refugee living in Burma Colony, told reporters that 70 to 80 families lived in the settlement. The families had been given three days to leave, he said. “The plot owners told us to leave within three days; we are clueless where to go,” Sabir said. Wednesday (September 16) was the last day of the notice period, he said. The dismantling continued on September 17, he confirmed.
Sabir said many residents were elderly and suffered from illnesses and when their families are left with no shelter they would face immense difficulties. “There are people who survive on medicine. They are left with no option to work. Meeting daily needs will be difficult now,” he said, adding, “We had no option but to come to Jammu after leaving our country.”
“Many of our people were killed and we were forced to flee,” Sabir said. “We cannot leave Jammu immediately because we have nowhere else to go.”
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.