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KUALA LUMPUR — Over a dozen sweaty and angry Rohingya men gathered in a small and grubby fifth-floor room of a walk-up flat in Pudu, a suburb outside the Malaysian capital famous for its wet market, thriving counterfeit trade and scores of small Chinese-owned printing presses.

From the wooden-framed window, one can see the brown marble towers of Times Square, the latest luxury shopping centre that many Rohingya men, as construction workers, had helped build a year ago.

The men spread on the bare cement floor piles of old newspaper cuttings and scores of official-looking letters.

The frayed newspaper cuttings tell the story of how over 10,000 Rohingyas fled their home in western Arakan province in Burma 20 years ago to escape persecution by the Burmese military. The story also tells of their bitter experiences in Malaysia - a country that has shown little sympathy for the Rohingyas although they are Muslim.

The letters constitute correspondence between individual Rohingyas and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and Western embassies and speak of their futile bid to win recognition of refugee status - to gain respectability and start a new life.

Almost universally, the applications for refugee status are rejected because, as the letters spread on the floor state, the Rohingyas have "failed to meet the conditions for refugee status as stated in the 1951 U.N. Convention of Refugees".

The grubby room is where the Rohingyas meet to discuss events that have an impact on their lives here. Most often it is to discuss how to avoid arrest and sure deportation back to Burma.

Today, the atmosphere is tense and the Rohingyas look frightened. They all believe that a major operation to round up Rohingyas is underway following an arson attack by three Rohingya brothers on the Burmese embassy here on Apr. 5.

"We came to Malaysia through Thailand and after a long and dangerous journey by land and sea. It took us a month to reach here and being a Muslim country we had hoped to find some sympathy and helpàbut life here is miserable," said a Rohingya who asked to be identified as just Ahmed.

"Why can't the UNHCR give us the one thing (refugee status) that can release us from all this misery and give us a new life," he said in an interview with IPS. "Why don't they have some mercyàis it too big a thing to ask?"

The Rohingyas say the brothers had burnt the rented embassy building in anger because they were unhappy that it had refused to endorse several documents that would have persuaded the UNHCR to give them refugee status.

The attack happened as Burma's Minister for Home Affairs Col Tin Hlaing was meeting with Bangladeshi leaders in Dhaka. They discussed the fate of about 200,000 Rohingyas in UNHCR-administered refugee camps in the Cox's Bazaar-Teknaf-Bandarban areas of Bangladesh bordering western Burma.

Police said the brothers would be charged with attempted murder, arson and not having proper travel papers, serious offences that could lead to long jail terms.

This month's arson attacks have focused attention on the plight of some 10,000 Rohingya immigrants who have no legal status and make do with poorly paid jobs. The men work in the night markets and women toil work as cleaners or beg with their children at night markets. Some work for 18 ringgit (4.7 U.S. dollars) a night.

They have no passports or identification documents issued by a state that give legal status, except UNHCR papers that says they are "persons of concern to the UNHCR". Other UNHRC papers just say the holder is "registered with the UNHCR."

The Rohingyas say they want to return to Arakan but the Burmese junta does not recognise them as citizens and refuses to accept them if deported from Malaysia or neighbouring Thailand.

The Rangoon junta sees the Rohingyas as illegal immigrants although Muslims have lived in Arakan state since the 12th century.

Almost no third country wants them because they are considered economic migrants. "Their situation is extremely precarious and difficult because Myanmar does not recognise them and they are rejected by third countries," said UNHCR officer Ruth Evans.

"The Rohingyas are stuck in an impossible, vicious loop," Evans told IPS. He said "very few" have received refuges status and resettled in third countries. "We have been negotiating with governments to find a solution for some time now," Evans said.

Rights activists say a lasting solution is unlikely in the short term because of major shortcomings from the UNHCR, Malaysia, Burma and third countries.

The Malaysian government, while prepared to receive fleeing refugees for the short term, is unwilling to shelter and resettle them as it had done for Filipino Muslims fleeing military operations in southern Mindanao in the 1970s or Vietnamese 'boat people'.

According to Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, "the government's stand on asylum is no different from that of illegal immigrants. If foreigners are found without valid entry permits, they will be sent back. This is the law of the country".

At the core of the issue is Malaysia's refusal to ratify the 1951 U.N. Convention on Refugees that grants displaced people rights, protection and shelter and asylum.

"We are an ideal magnet for millions of people in Asia and face a potentially explosive refugee problem if we are too generous," a senior government official told IPS. "We don't want to open the floodgates."

Rights activist Eric Paulson of SUARAM, a human rights group that works with the Rohingyas and other displaced people, told IPS that Malaysia does not have its own laws on refugees and thus applies various laws on immigration on them.

"Without recognition a refugee is considered an illegal immigrant and suffers harsh and arbitrary penalties," he told IPS in an interview. Under the law, a person without a valid entry permit is liable to be fined 10,000 rupiah (2,630 dollars), jailed for five years and whipped six times.

Other undocumented immigrants have passports and local embassies to assist them. But as one Rohingya said, "We have nothing, no identity papers, no travel documents, no passports, we are helpless."

Activists say that Malaysia's practice of deporting Rohingyas to where they fled from flouts the international principle of non-refoulement, which holds that this should not happen to persons seeking asylum.

Nearly all Rohingyas in the room arrived through Thailand's southern border at night. Some were caught, but returned to Malaysia. "The next day we cross back into Malaysia and taken a bus back to the capital," one Rohingya told IPS. "I have been deported seven times before."

The grubby room soon fills up with anger as one after another the Rohingyas related their experiences in Burma and in Malaysia.

"We are treated as animals, as pests. Everybody feeds on us and takes something from us, all my life is spent running, hiding and living like an animal," said another man.

"I know deeply the despair of the three brothers who burnt the (Burmese) embassy," he said. "We all feel the same hopelessness." (END/Copyright IPS)