Rohingya orphans still reeling from horror and pain
FOUR-YEAR-OLD Nur Khan cringes in fear whenever he sees someone unknown near his shack in Ukhia of Cox’s Bazar. There’s a reason for that: five weeks ago, the child witnessed both his parents being brutally murdered.
His younger brother, 1-and-half-year-old Nur Hasan, was lucky as he did not see the barbarity, but his elder brother is scarred for life.
Their father, Shahidul Amin, was a grocer in Bolly Bazar in Mangduaw, Myanmar. The day when he was killed along with his wife, their paternal grandfather asked their maternal grandmother to take the children and flee immediately.
“Leave the country as soon as possible, he said. I left taking them with me,” Rafia Begum, their grandmother who brought them to Bangladesh, told the Daily Star yesterday.
“We crossed the border on September 1 but have not been able to contact Hasan’s grandfather ever since,” said Rafia.
While their grandmother spoke of the strenuous journey to escape the conflict-ridden Rakhine state, Nur Khan stared vacantly, into seemingly nothingness. He seemed like he did not know who to trust outside of his immediate family.
The siblings are among 7,000 Rohingya orphans, a number authorities presume will double by the time they have finished surveying the recent influx of refugees from Myanmar.
To deal with the growing number of orphan children, the Department of Social Welfare under the Social Welfare Ministry has already taken up a project to register those in the Rohingya camps from September 20. Since then, a total of 6,797 Rohingya orphan children, who the social welfare officials term “Myanmar National Orphan Child” were registered.
Pritom Kumar Chowdhury, deputy director of Department of Social Welfare, said, “We hope that we can complete the registration process within the next week. We are apprehending that the number could double.”
He also said that after completing the registration process, they will be given smart cards.
“We have already applied to the Deputy Commissioner Cox’s Bazar to allocate 80 hectares of land in Balukhali dedicated to these children to build shelter for them.”
Sobbir Ahmed, a block leader in Tyingkhali temporary shelter centre in Ukhia upazila, said there are hundreds of children who have lost both their parents; the lucky ones, if the word even applies, have lost either a father or mother.
Sabika, 8, Sehena, 6, Jennat Ara, 4, and Rohina, 2.5, are four sisters who can at least count on the warmth of a mother.
Sabika now looks after her siblings when her mother Saila Khatun goes to collect relief for them. When asked where their father was, neither Sabika nor Sehena gave any reply.
Seeing this reporter, their aunt, Layla Khatun, came forward saying their father Salimullah was a wood trader. They all left the house when chaos broke in Myanmar but returned home after a while. However, one day all of a sudden, the Myanmar army raided their house and killed their father. On September 5, their mother Saila Khatun crossed the border and took shelter in Tyingkhali.
Now, the girls have to rely solely on their mother.