Stalls closed, refugees called to stay at home: the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh Tuesday August 25 all activities for the genocide remembrance day
, marking the third anniversary of the exodus of this persecuted minority in Burma.
Nearly 750,000 members of this Muslim community fled ethnic cleansing in western Burma in 2017 led by the army and Buddhist militias. They joined the ranks of some 200,000 Rohingya already sheltered in Bangladesh, a legacy of previous waves of violence.
The massive influx of refugees caused the birth of sprawling camps in the district of Cox’s Bazar (south-eastern Bangladesh), made up of rudimentary tarpaulin and bamboo huts stretching as far as the eye could see. where black poverty reigns.
“Aung San Suu Kyi is a terrorist”
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, no major demonstrations were planned in the camps, unlike in previous years. There will be no gatherings, no work, no prayers in mosques, no NGO or humanitarian activities, no Koranic schools, no food distribution.
said Mohib Ullah, a Rohingya leader in the camps.
Shops and tea stalls, usual places of socialization, kept the door closed Tuesday in Kutupalong, the largest refugee camp in the world. Rohingya officials called on the million refugees to stay in their huts, but some of them ventured outside anyway.
Aung San Suu Kyi is a terrorist, not a Nobel Peace Prize laureate
, proclaimed one of the posters plastered in the camp for this day of commemoration, in reference to the Burmese leader.
Rohingya Muslims treated as outcasts in Burma
Major operations by the Burmese army began on August 25, 2017, in response to attacks by a Rohingya rebel group. The accounts of massacres, rapes and abuses fuel accusations of genocide
against predominantly Buddhist Burma, where Rohingya Muslims have been treated as outcasts for decades.
The Burmese Army killed over 10,000 of us. They carried out mass killings and rapes and forced our people to flee their homes
, a dit Mohib Ullah.
Mohammad Bashar, 30, lost his father and uncles in the purification. Now a refugee in Bangladesh, he regularly thinks about his life in Burma before the exodus.
I cannot describe all the suffering we have been through over the past three years. Living in the camps like beggars and outcasts, I often see in my dreams the house shaded by a tree, the cows and my happy family
, he said.
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