JK PANORAMA SEPTEMBER ISSUE

the military junta that used to rule Myanmar, and
they have suffered decades of repression under the
country's Buddhist majority, including killings and
mass rape, according to the United Nations. A new
armed resistance is giving the military more
reasons to oppress them.
But the past week's exodus of civilians caught in
the middle, which the United Nations said had
reached nearly 76,000 on Saturday, dwarfs
previous outflows of refugees to Bangladesh in
such a short time period. Friday's influx alone was
the single largest movement of Rohingya here in
more than a generation, according to the United
Nations office in Dhaka.
Person after person along the trail into Bangladesh
told of how the security forces cordoned off
Rohingya villages as the fire rained down, and
then shot and stabbed civilians. Children were not
exempt.
Mizanur Rahman recalled how on Aug. 25 he had
been working in a rice paddy in his village, known
in Rohingya as Ton Bazar, in Buthidaung
Township in Myanmar, when helicopters roared
into the sky above him.
“Immediately, I had fear in my heart,” he said. His
wife came running out of their house with their
son, less than a month old.
They escaped to a nearby forest and watched as
the choppers' weapons engulfed the village in
flames. Myanmar security forces descended, and
the sound of gunfire reached the forest.
Mr. Rahman's extended family fled the next day,
but not before seeing his brother's body lying on
the ground, along with seven others. Three days
later, as they climbed a hill near the border with
Bangladesh, Mr. Rahman's mother was shot dead
by a Myanmar border guard.
“Now we are supposed to be safe in Bangladesh,
but I do not feel safe,” Mr. Rahman said, as he
wandered through a market in the Kutupalong
refugee camp, with no money in his pocket.
What the survivors are fleeing into is no haven.
Bangladesh is itself poor, overcrowded and
waterlogged, and has been reluctant to take on
more displaced Rohingya. Around 400,000 already
lived here before the exodus, according to
government figures.
An urgent humanitarian disaster is brewing here in
a country hard-pressed to feed itself, much less a
new influx of refugees that one Bangladeshi
official estimated could soon surpass 100,000
people.
For now, the Border Guard Bangladesh is mostly
turning a blind eye and allowing the Rohingya to
stream across the border.
But there is little help for them here, as they push
on in hopes of reaching some of the grim refugee
camps further in.
n an open letter to Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, nearly a
dozen of her fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureates
labeled last October's military offensive “a human
tragedy amounting to ethnic cleansing and crimes
against humanity.”
“Some international experts have warned of the
potential for genocide,” said the letter, signed by
Desmond Tutu and Malala Yousafzai, among
others. “It has all the hallmarks of recent past
tragedies: Rwanda, Darfur, Bosnia, Kosovo.”
Standing at the edge of a muddy path to Rezu
Amtali, after a five-day journey with only a few
handfuls of ruined rice to sustain them, a 6-yearold
girl named Roufaja tugged at her mother's
sleeve. “Are we in Bangladesh yet?” she asked.
Her mother, Fatima Khatun — whose husband was
presumed dead and sister had been raped by the
security forces who had besieged their village —
replied that they were.
“What are we going to do now?” her daughter
asked, pulling at her sleeve again. “I'm hungry.”
Rohingya refugees who had crossed the border into Bangladesh,
after days of walking to escape violence in their villages.
Credit Adam Dean for The New York Times
13 September 2017 JK