Vector Volume 11 Issue 2 - 2017

of “mass gang-rape, killings, including of babies and
young children, brutal beatings, disappearances and
other serious human rights violations by the country’s
security forces”, returning to Myanmar is not an option.[3]
UNHCR interviews with
Rohingya refugees detail random
shooting at crowds who were
fleeing houses, schools, mosques
and markets that had been set
alight by Myanmar’s army, police
and occasionally civilian mobs.[4]
Destruction of food, livestock and
food sources; cases where the army or Rakhine civilians
have trapped an entire family, including the elderly and
disabled, inside a house and set it on fire “killing them all”;
mothers assaulted by “security” forces while being forced
to watch their babies stabbed and killed – words cannot
do it justice.[4]
Recent news reveals that Burmese officials have
planted landmines along the Bangladesh border, posing
a lethal threat to Rohingya peoples fleeing atrocities.
Deemed unlawful for their inability to distinguish between
civilians and militants, children and adults, landmines have
been banned in many countries under the 1997 Mine Ban
Treaty. Not a signatory to this, Myanmar officials continue
to use them against Rohingya civilians, protected by the
unsurprising denial by the Burmese government that such
landmine plantings have taken place.
An assortment of condemnations have been offered
by the UN; crimes against humanity,[3] genocide, ethnic
cleansing. The UN High Commissioner for Human
Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, concludes his report on
the Myanmar atrocities by despairing, “What kind of
‘clearance operation’ is this? What national security
goals could possibly be served by this?”.[3] As Hussein
seems painfully aware, these words fall on deaf ears.
Medical Crisis
Humanitarian agencies are floundering, desperately
attempting to provide emergency care for the monsoonal
influx of Rohingya refugees, most of whom have a variety
of physical and psychological conditions. Studies of the
health conditions within Bangladesh’s two main registered
refugee camps present unsurprisingly dire findings.
One psychiatric study surveyed a group of registered
Rohingya refugees and reported experiences of torture
(39.9%), sexual abuse (12.8%), rape (8%), forced
abortions (2.4%), PTSD (36%), depressive symptoms
(89%), suicidal ideations (19%) and deaths of friends or
family due to illness or starvation while fleeing (22.4%).
[5] Hopelessness was the common theme, with one
Rohingyan interviewee asking, “Our future has been
spoiled, but what will happen to the future of our children?”
Hopelessness was the common theme,
with one Rohingyan interviewee asking,
“Our future has been spoiled, but what
will happen to the future of our children?”
In 2015, another study investigated the general health
conditions of Bangladesh’s largest Rohingya refugee
camp, Nayapara.[1] With a population of 18,777, the camp
was attended by only four trained doctors and six nurses.
The infant mortality rate was 45.4 per 1000 livebirths and
one quarter of the population was
children, most of whom were born
in a camp. Additionally, the study
reported widespread stunting due
to malnutrition (57%), anaemia
(49%), and a high prevalence of
respiratory (46.9%), endocrine
(21.9%) and cardiovascular
disorders (14.8%). Mental health
conditions were ubiquitously poor; 18.7% of camp
injuries were caused by self-harm, and in Bangladesh’s
other major camp, 43.3% of Rohingya refugees were
diagnosed with a psychotic disorder.
Importantly, health conditions in registered refugee
camps far surpass those of the many unregistered camps
in countries neighbouring Myanmar. These makeshift
shelters, which house twice as many Rohingya as the
registered camps, are conferred no security or support
from the already-drowning NGOs servicing the area.
This, however, is still favourable to staying in the northern
Rakhine state of Myanmar where health conditions are
so abysmal that, for example, mortality in children under 5
has reached 224 per 1000 livebirths.[6]
Role of Health Professionals in Social Justice
In situations where political and military injustice
seem impenetrable, often the most basic human
right affordable is emergency medical care, but is the
assumption that medical aids are exempt from political
and military violence still applicable today? As seen
in reports of hospitals targeted in Syria by Western
military, it seems that medical neutrality is no longer a
guarantee. Combined with the Myanmar government’s
notoriously uncooperative relationship with humanitarian
organisations, one must ask what responsibility
healthcare professionals are expected to bear in the
realm of human rights.
In 2014, Médecins Sans Frontières was banned
in Rakhine, and a month later, when humanitarian aid
agencies were attacked by Buddhist anti-Rohingya
radicals, Myanmar’s government only further restricted
humanitarian aid.[6] This ban has since been lifted
but access is now parlous again due to the Myanmar
government’s “formulated and disseminated accusations
against the UN and international NGOs, denial of required
travel and activity authorisations, and threatening
statements and actions by hardline groups”.[7] Also
recently, the UNHCR High Commissioner Hussein has
struggled with repeated government restrictions on
humanitarian access to the worst affected regions of
Rakhine, and bans on UN investigative officials entering
3