As a front line photojournalist I have to seen many destruction and death during my photojournalist assignment to coverage like many disaster situation but Rohingya’s refuges fled from Myanmar to me should different, thousand and thousand feeling form Myanmar to enter Bangladesh during their long journey, to scape death and violence. I feel pain and sorrows to see of them, especially children and women to cross the border on the muddy water on to the bad weather. I saw after they enter into Bangladesh their face is quite happy to escape death but they are really desperate for food, for water, for shelter, for their baby’s health . . .
-monirul alam, Independent photojournalist
Rohingya people, fled from ongoing military operations in Myanmars Rakhine state, make their way through muddy water after crossing the Bangladesh-Myanmar border in Teknuf, Bangladesh on September 2017. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, more than 400,000 Rohingya refugees have fled Myanmar from violence over the last few weeks, most trying to cross the border and reach Bangladesh. The crisis began when a Rohingya insurgent group launched attacks with rifles and machetes on a series of security posts in Myanmar on August 25, prompting the military to launch a brutal round of “clearance operations” in response. Those fleeing have described indiscriminate attacks by security forces and Buddhist mobs, including monks, as well as killings and rapes.
Conditions are worsening in the border town of Cox’s Bazar where the influx has added to pressures on Rohingya camps already overwhelmed with 400,000 people from earlier waves of refugees. Poor and low-income countries such as Bangladesh, Uganda and Lebanon are left struggling to deal with huge numbers of refugees, when rich countries who host far fewer should be stepping up to provide aid and resettlement places. Myanmar’s government, led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, and it’s still powerful military do not allow independent media free access to northern Rakhine state, from where the Rohingya are fleeing. While fires are no longer visible from the Bangladeshi border, some refugees told that their homes had been burned during Myanmar military to launch a brutal round of clearance operations.
The latest evidence published by Amnesty International points to a mass-scale scorched-earth campaign across northern Rakhine State, where Myanmar security forces and vigilante mobs are burning down entire Rohingya villages and shooting people at random as they try to flee. In legal terms, these are crimes against humanity – systematic attacks and forcible deportation of civilians. This is more than the total number of refugees who came to Europe by sea in 2016.
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MONIRUL ALAM 