In Myanmar, one girl's plight epitomizes struggle of Rohingya ethnic minority

DAR PAING, Myanmar -- Ever since she was born in a squalid camp for displaced members of Myanmar's ethnic Rohingya minority, Rosmaida Bibi has struggled to do something most of the world's children do effortlessly: grow.

Frail and severely malnourished, she looks a lot like every other underfed child here, until you realize she's not like any of them at all.

A girl with big brown eyes, Rosmaida is 4 -- but barely the size of a 1-year-old.

She wobbles unsteadily when she walks. Bones protrude through the flimsy skin of her chest. While other kids her age chatter incessantly, Rosmaida is listless, able to speak only a handful of words: "Papa." "Mama." "Rice."

Half a decade after a wave of anti-Muslim violence exploded in this predominantly Buddhist nation, forcing more than 120,000 Rohingya Muslims into a series of camps in western Myanmar, this is what the government's policy of persecution, segregation and neglect looks like up close.

It's a policy born of decades of military dictatorship and fear Muslims are encroaching on what should be Buddhist land. The troubling thing today, rights groups said, is this stance has been adopted by the administration of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace laureate and longtime opposition leader who rose to power after her party swept national elections last year.

And any hope Suu Kyi -- once lauded worldwide as a human-rights icon -- might turn things around has been shattered by her silence and the reality that life for the Rohingya has deteriorated by the day.

"This is worse than a prison," Rosmaida's 20-year-old mother, Hamida Begum, said of the makeshift hut they call home -- the place where her daughter was born that floods with each heavy rain.

Poor, unemployed and prohibited from crossing checkpoints into more affluent Buddhist-only areas, Begum has been unable to find anyone who can help.

"I want to give her an education. I want to send her to school like all the other kids," she said as Rosmaida burrowed into her lap in Dar Paing, near the state capital, Sittwe. "But it's not possible because she's so sick. ... She cannot grow."

The Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic group, long have been denied citizenship, freedom of movement and basic rights in Myanmar, a country that largely sees them as foreigners from neighboring Bangladesh, though most were born here.

Although tensions in Rakhine state go back decades, the neighborhood where Begum grew up in Sittwe was mixed, and she said people there used to get along.

That changed June 5, 2012, when Buddhist mobs began attacking Muslims and setting homes ablaze. Begum fled, running barefoot so hard and so fast, she realized only later her feet were covered in blood.

Today her neighborhood -- where denuded trees and the destroyed remains of homes still are visible -- is occupied by Buddhist squatters. Although Begum said her grandparents owned their family's house there, they have not been allowed to return, nor compensated for its destruction.

Aside from one district, Sittwe is entirely Buddhist, and Muslims are prohibited from walking its streets.

Suu Kyi has denied such policies equate to ethnic cleansing, but international rights groups insist that's what they are. Suu Kyi's office did not respond to requests for comment.

Matthew Smith, who runs the advocacy group Fortify Rights, said: "It's scandalous that these internment camps still exist five years on. ... The reality is that there's a lot she (Suu Kyi) could be doing but isn't.

"The Rohingya are no closer now to getting their rights ... and in some respects, the situation is much worse," he said. Over the last year, "there's been mass killing, mass rape, widespread forced labor and other violations, all committed with complete impunity."

After a Rohingya insurgent group killed nine officers in northern Rakhine state in October -- the first reported attack of its kind -- security forces responded by burning villages, raping women and killing an unknown number of people in a rampage that sent 75,000 people fleeing into neighboring Bangladesh, according to the United Nations and international rights groups. The government puts the toll at 52 dead or missing and blames extremists for the killings.

Although southern Rakhine state, where Rosmaida lives, was not affected, the region has experienced a spike in tensions. On Tuesday, a 100-strong Buddhist mob in Sittwe killed one Rohingya man and injured six others who ventured into the city under police escort to buy boats.

Suu Kyi said her administration is dealing with the issue by implementing the recommendations of a commission led by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, which called on the government to close the displaced camps and allow inhabitants to return home.

Most of the camps remain open, though, and Suu Kyi's administration restricts access to the region, blocking journalists from independent access to the north. Last week, her government said it also would bar members of a U.N.-approved fact-finding mission from entering the country to investigate alleged rights violations by security forces against the Rohingya.

Vanna Sara, a Buddhist abbot at Sittwe's Seik Ke Daw Min monastery, said harsh policies were necessary to protect Buddhists. Western Myanmar is on the frontline of a population explosion, and Muslims, he said, are trying to "swallow the whole region."

"They can't be trusted. No Muslim can be trusted. They're all scary," Sara said. "That's why, to tell you the truth, it's better that we don't live with the Muslims. That's how we feel."

When Begum settled in Dar Paing after the 2012 violence, she tried to start her life anew. But her tragic story has mirrored that of many Rohingya. The man she married died shortly after he was detained in Malaysia, where he was trying to bring their family for a better life. Their son died a few hours after birth.

Begum has remarried, but her fisherman husband sometimes comes home from a day of work with less than a dollar or nothing. That makes it hard to care for her biggest concern -- her daughter -- who is lucky to be alive.

A report by UNICEF in May said a 150 children under the age of 5 die each day in Myanmar, while nearly 30 percent are malnourished. Although the U.N. does not have statistics for the camps, half of whose inhabitants are children, aid workers said the situation inside them is even worse.

Begum has taken her daughter to local clinics half a dozen times, but her condition never has improved.

Rosmaida is being helped by an international humanitarian charity that is giving her ready-to-eat packets of therapeutic food paste to alleviate severe acute malnutrition, which the World Health Organization describes as "a life-threatening condition requiring urgent treatment."

But Begum is concerned because her daughter's appetite is so low, "she has trouble eating all of them."

Twice a day, she takes her daughter's hand and walks her through Dar Paing's labyrinth corridors, a place Rosmaida has lived in her entire life.

It's hard, she says, because Rosmaida's tiny joints often hurt. She can't walk far, and she's never been able to run.

Soon, Begum will have another reason to worry: She is pregnant again.