Living for years in 10 feet by 12 feet congested accommodations housing 10 to 15 members per family, the boys and girls who were supposed to bloom in their talents, now see no hope for the future.

They have nothing to do other than loitering in the walled camps at Kutupalong in Ukhia and at Nayapara in Teknaf which are approximately 1.25 square kilometre in size and where more than 20,000 Rohingya refugees have been living since 1992.

"What shall we do...we don't even have a playground. We want to go back to our country, but the government there (Myanmar) does not recognize us. The police torture us and so we don't dare to go," an 18-year boy told The Daily Star that recently visited the Kutupalong camp.

He requested not to mention his name saying that the police deployed in the camps to maintain law and order would torture him and might even put him in jail if they found out that he was giving information to the press.

Several hundred children encircled an EU-UN team when it visited the camps on November 8 and gave an account of the sufferings they go through in their daily lives.

"I want to study, but there is no way to it... what will be our future if we don't get higher education... or learn any trade," said Akbar Hossain, 21 of Nayapara camp who had come to Bangladesh in 1991 with his parents following religious and political persecution in the Arakan state of Myanmar.

Several boys of Nayapara camp told The Daily Star that many of them who completed primary education in the camps run by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) flee the camps and go to Ukhia or Teknaf for madrasa education.

"They panhandle to earn money and study in madrasas," said Kamal from the Nayapara camp. An official of the UNHCR said about 200 such students might be studying in madrasas outside the camps.

"We have no peace here or in our own country. Many Rohingyas who had been repatriated, came back again and told us that the Myanmar government had harassed them," said a 16-year old boy preferring anonymity.

They have many things to speak out about, but cannot do that in fear of persecution by the police, said a youth who had come to Bangladesh at the age of five in 1991. In November 2004 the police sent at least 73 people to jail from the Kutupalong camp just for demonstrating for more allocation of food.

World Food Programme provides rations to the refugees and they have no permission to go out of the camps neither are they allowed to work in exchange of payments. Officials concerned said this is making them lethargic and unproductive.

According to UNHCR, it repeatedly urged the government to provide secondary education to the refugees and to allow them to move freely, but the government did not respond to it fearing that easing of the restrictions might encourage them to opt for integration here instead of going back to Myanmar.

Refugee Relief Repatriation Commissioner Shoyebur Rahman, also a joint secretary to the food and disaster management ministry, said the differences between syllabuses and education systems in Myanmar and Bangladesh are also making it difficult to provide secondary education for the refugees.

The EU-UN team headed by EU Ambassador Stefan Frowein said they could arrange education for the refugee children if the government agreed.

"Education is a basic human right, and it does not harm any nation. And deprivation of the basic right is exploitation," Netherlands Ambassador Kees Beemsterboer said.