Along the stretch of desolate lands from Rakhaine to Teknaf, the cries of the Rohingya people and the stench of their dead overwhelmed the environment. This was August 2017, the height of the Rohingya crisis.
These poor, mostly Muslim people — human beings like everyone deserving of humane treatment and basic rights — have been deprived of their lives, to be recognized as citizens and deprived of their country where they have been living for centuries. They have been subjected to unimaginable terror campaigns and violence on a scale not witnessed since the Holocaust. Rohingyas are an ethnic people who reside in Rakhaine state of Myanmar; the majority are Muslims that have co-existed for centuries within the majority Buddhist Myanmar (though the government refused to recognize them as Myanmar citizens). During the last few decades, Myanmar has been pushing Rohingyas into Bangladesh. Last year, an enormous humanitarian crisis flowed from a mass purge and wholesale slaughter of Rohingya in Myanmar. Since, the peak of the crisis in August 2017, nearly 700,000 Rohingya mostly women and children, have fled to Bangladesh. Of this massive fleeing migration, 58% are children; 48,000 Rohingya infants will be born in Bangladesh this year alone.
I stayed in Cox’s Bazar for months, visiting the camps and extensively documented the perilous journey they had to make fleeing to Bangladesh.
I witnessed the Rohingyas attempting to reach Teknaf on improvised boats, many capsizing before reaching the shore, drowning its youngest travelers. I found mothers, unsure about the future, protectively holding their children. After reaching the camps, a new journey with a new struggle began for them: from registering as refugees to standing in long queues for food, medical and other relief materials, all were experiences which they did not even deserve to endure.
They lost their identity and their own people in Myanmar. Sick and malnourished, they lost still more here in Bangladesh, while many slowly succumbed to their injuries sustained in Myanmar Many ill-prepared mothers and fragile newborns were seeing the light of the world in the camps – as bleak as that presented, it was a positive moment for the Rohingya.
Above all, I remarkably witnessed their efforts of the displaced Rohingya to continue their life in the camps with a hopeful resilience aided by others.