• Thursday, March 28, 2024

News

Scale of Rohingya crisis ‘left me lost for words’

By: JurmoloyaRava

BRITISH BANGLADESHI CHARITY WORKER SHOCKED BY CONDITIONS IN REFUGEE CAMPS

by NADEEM BADSHAH

A BRITISH man who is risking his life to help thousands of people fleeing violence in Myanmar has spoken of the “truly shocking” refugee crisis there.

Ruhul Tarafder is in Bangladesh where nearly one million Rohingya Muslims have travelled to from Myanmar for safety. The local community in the south Asian coun­try, charities working on the ground and the United Nations have all warned that there have been mass murders, rapes and villages being destroyed by the military as part of Myanmar’s crackdown on extremists.

Tarafder a father-of-two, from Kent, is helping migrants living in mud shacks by giving them food packs containing rice, oil, lentils, spices, salt, sugar and other essentials.

He told Eastern Eye that he has supported children whose parents have been killed in their homeland, as well as widows in Cox’s Bazar in Chittagong, Bangladesh.

Tarafder said the refugees have “nothing apart from the clothes they are wearing”.

The former race equality campaigner, who arrived in Bangladesh last month (on Octo­ber 21) said: “I am kind of lost for words due to the sheer scale of what is happening here.

“In the UK we complain about the most trivial of things, but coming here is a re­minder of how lucky we all are,” he added.

“Every day, there are thousands more refugees arriving, fleeing from persecution.

“Entire families have to live in a few me­tres of space, they sleep on the floor.

“They have to cook using whatever twigs and rubbish they can find. There is a con­stant stench from the lack of sanitation fa­cilities – would you believe these are the lucky ones, as thousands more have been unable to cross and are still stranded?”

Tarafder, who is working with British charity the Community Against Poverty (CAP) Foundation, has raised nearly £7,000 through donations for the project. It has set up a medical and mental health camp to offer first aid, counselling and trauma ther­apy to those affected.

The British Bangladeshi said doctors treated a woman who nearly died after suf­fering a miscarriage on October 23.

“As soon as we opened the camp, a lady turned up in absolute agony. She could hardly walk and her husband had to carry her to one of our vehicles.

“The problem was the nearest hospital was around five kilometres away. The lady was being violently sick and screaming for help. By the time we reached the hospital, she was hysterical. She was rushed into the critical assessment unit where we could still hear her screams – the midwife told us that she was lucky to be alive.”

The UN last Friday (3) warned of a rise in life-threatening levels of malnutrition among Rohingya refugee children. Prelimi­nary data indicated that 7.5 per cent of the children crammed into one of the camps in Cox’s Bazar district were at risk of dying from severe acute malnutrition, the UN children’s agency said.

Myanmar authorities say the security crack­down was in response to attacks by Roh­ingya militants on police posts in August.

Tarafder said: “The aid agencies and charities are trying to do what they can, but you cannot help but wonder what’s going to happen to the Rohingya people over the next few weeks, months and years?”

  • To donate to Tarafder’s work for the CAP Foundation, visit https://mydonate.bt.com/ fundraisers/tarafderbari1
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