TEKNAF, Bangladesh — Alam’s short life ended on Saturday in a dark, tattered tent in Bangladesh, the Rohingya child’s skeletal body succumbing to illness contracted while fleeing Myanmar where his stateless people are under attack.
He was six-months-old.
Alam died hours after arriving at makeshift refugee camp close to Teknaf, the gateway to Cox’s Bazar, a poor, densely populated coastal area already home to more than 230,000 Rohingya refugees.
But for the Rohingya, Bangladesh is far from a promised land.
So far little or no aid has been provided for the new arrivals, with Bangladeshi authorities fearing food, medicine and shelter will encourage more to cross the border.
With her child’s body by her side, Alam’s 22-year-old mother Nur Begum describes how a Myanmar army raid that killed her husband and two other children forced her to flee Rakhine State for Bangladesh.
After a three-week journey Begum and her increasingly sick child made it to the camp in Leda, across the Bangladeshi border.
But Alam’s journey was at an end.
“I finally had some food in the camp and thought I would be able to feed him,” his distraught mother said. “But he left me before I had the chance.”
Up to 30,000 Rohingya have abandoned their homes in Myanmar since early October, after soldiers poured into the strip of land in western Rakhine state following deadly raids on border posts.
The refugees who have made it to Cox’s Bazar so far have brought with them horrifying stories of gang rape and murder.
Bangladesh provides a mixed reception to the Rohingya.
Although people around Cox’s Bazar have centuries-long historical ties with the Rohingya, locals increasingly perceive the refugees as a crime-prone nuisance.
Only 32,000 Rohingya are formally registered as refugees.
The remaining 200,000 scratch an existence without help from government or charities.
And their numbers swell with every crisis across the border in Myanmar.
To avoid more arrivals Dhaka has periodically blocked refugee boats and called for Myanmar to stop the exodus.
Authorities already tightly control aid workers and arrest people who illegally help the minority.
“Bangladesh has said often that it cannot sustain any more refugees, and in fact, has refused to allow humanitarian assistance to the Rohingyas because it might be a pull factor,” said Human Rights Watch’s South Asia chief Meenakshi Ganguly.
But she added “people don’t leave their homes, make perilous journeys, simply for free blankets and medicines.”
The country’s Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan on Friday told reporters that Rohingya arrivals would be treated humanely, but so far no aid has reached the new entrants.
That has heaped pressure on pre-existing Rohingya refugee encampments. — AFP
