Bangladesh

By Mohammed Tofail is a Rohingya refugee living in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Follow Mohammed on Twitter @MdTofaiL339

Almost half a million Rohingya children do not have access to formal education inside the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar. When the children of other parts of the world are able to study online during the pandemic, the situation is pushing our children further behind. The world should not leave us behind, caged in a camp like this.

We are a scared community. Due to the spread of rumors about COVID-19 through word of mouth, people are now more scared about reporting illness and receiving treatment.

The internet blackout is keeping us in the dark about information related to COVID-19. Bangladesh has been so kind to us. Letting our people suffer in a pandemic by limiting access to essential information is against the country’s humanitarian goodwill. 

By Saad Hammadi, South Asia Campaigner, Amnesty International. Follow Saad on Twitter @saadhammadi

Rahima Khatun*, a Rohingya woman, was dragged by the authorities to an isolation facility soon after someone with the same name as hers tested positive for COVID-19 in one of the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar. Rahima said to caregivers that she had never given a swab in her life, but to no avail. The healthcare facility, where she was brought for isolation, carried out a test on her as she protested.

She had to be in an isolation facility for two days. Once she tested negative the healthcare facility let her go back to her shelter in the camp. Her traumatic experience scared others in the camp. Now people are afraid of testing.

Updated May 22, 2020

Shocking footage of Rohingya women, men and children being rescued off rickety boats after dangerous sea voyages is still being broadcast around the world.

According to reports, more boats – carrying hundreds more Rohingya people – are still stranded at sea and in urgent need of rescue. These vessels have nowhere to land, as countries ignore international obligations to allow safe disembarkation, using COVID-19 restrictions as a pretext.

These policies raise the risk of repeating the dangerous mistakes of 2015, when the break-up of trafficking networks left thousands of Rohingya stranded in Southeast Asian waters, with likely hundreds losing their lives.

Here, Amnesty International explains why the Rohingya are still risking everything to flee crowded refugee camps in Bangladesh and apartheid conditions in Myanmar.

We also explain how countries in the region can help, and why the Rohingya shouldn’t be sent back to Myanmar.

Who are the Rohingya people?

Whether we asked about the possibility of going home to Myanmar or the challenges of life in Bangladesh, every Rohingya – old or young – who our Amnesty International delegation interviewed in the refugee camps said the same thing: human rights.

With the release of our new report, “I Don’t Know What My Future Will Be”, Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh, Amnesty International is echoing that call and looking to the governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh, with strong backing and resources from the international community, to ensure that violations end, past abuses are addressed and that the human rights of Rohingya, on both sides of the border, are fully respected and upheld. 

It is a time for solidarity and for action.  There will be many opportunities for Amnesty International supporters to take action and demonstrate that solidarity over the coming weeks and months.

Balukhali Refugee Camp, Bangladesh

“We’ve been through this before, but never like this.  Never so many people.  And now it feels like it might go on and on. It has been eighteen months, but it feels like forever.”

Mohammed Ali, a 65-year-old farmer, was returning from his fields to his home in the village of Kyein Chaung, in the Township of Maungdaw, in Myanmar’s Rakhine State in early September, 2017.  And the attack began. The village was surrounded by government soldiers who began shooting at villagers and setting fire to houses as they advanced. The people of Kyein Chaung knew what was coming as they had already seen dead bodies floating down the stream from other neighbouring villages.

“There was only one thing to do.  We knew we had to leave and we ran.  And fortunately, no one in our own family was injured or killed. But we heard cries around us.  We knew that could easily have been us. And it was only good luck that it was not.”

Photos: Ahmer Khan (Twitter, Instagram) Words: Saad Hammadi, South Asia Campaigner (Twitter)

The Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh have yet to come to terms with the trauma they had experienced in Myanmar. Ahmer Khan visited Cox’s Bazar to document in photographs the Rohingya people with what they held dearest to them during their troubled escape from home…writes Saad Hammadi

Last November, when word spread of a possible repatriation of a few thousand Rohingya refugees, hundreds sought sanctuary in other camps in Cox’s Bazar to escape a forced return and avoid being identified.

In the desperately overcrowded camps across Ukhiya in Cox’s Bazar, many Rohingya refugees have still not recovered from the trauma they experienced in Myanmar. That painful escape from home still haunts them.

By Ta*, an LGBT activist in Bangladesh

“I might not come any longer. I’m afraid. You had to flee from one place to another out of fear of being slaughtered by the extremists. If something like that happens again, I don’t have the strength or ability to do things like you.” I have received many messages like this from fellow LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual) activists in Bangladesh over the past year. On 25 April 2016, Xulhaz Mannan and Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy were killed mercilessly by extremists for promoting LGBT rights in Bangladesh – nothing has been the same since.