Brothers escape massacre, must survive refugee camp
Three months ago, these two Rohingya brothers had a loving family, a little house near a river, a worn soccer ball to play with and 15 cows for fresh milk. It’s all gone now: the family killed. The house torched. The cows stolen.
More than 650,000 Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar fleeing a military crackdown have entered Bangladesh since late August, one of the most rapid exoduses in history. This month, the United Nations human rights chief suggested that the Myanmar military deliberately targeted civilians belonging to the minority Rohingya in “acts of appalling barbarity” that may have included “elements of genocide.”
The ordeal began Aug. 25, when Rohingya militants attacked Myanmar police posts. Five days later, the boys’ village was inundated with soldiers who – human rights groups allege – killed, raped and burned villagers in their homes. Shamsul, 8, and Jafar, 11, followed a stream of people to Bangladesh, two of about 1,800 children who made the terrifying days-long journey to safety without their immediate caregivers, according to UNICEF. Many have been taken in by neighbours or extended families, authorities say, but face dangers such as child traffickers, diseases and malnourishment.
By early December, the brothers had learned the physical landscape of the sprawling camp – which fishmonger sells the best dried fish, which adults should be avoided, which empty stretch of dirt is best for kicking a ball. But their grief is harder to navigate. “Everyone has parents but us,” Shamsul often says out loud, part in pain, part in wonder. atrocities of the Army’s ethnic cleansing campaign.”
Myanmar’s military leaders and its civilian government, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, have consistently denied that security forces in the Buddhist-majority country have targeted the Rohingya.
In Tula Toli, escape for Jafar meant crossing a fast-moving river. He had been separated from Shamsul when the soldiers came, but he spotted the little boy, who cannot swim, riding in an old dinghy with others. He dove in.
The current was strong, but the sight of the back of his brother’s head made him swim harder. “Shamsul, Shamsul!” he called out. Jafar swam with all his strength, calling out to his brother. “I was afraid I would lose him,” Jafar said. Several others drowned while attempting to cross.
Jafar made it out of the river and onto the bank, where he embraced Shamsul. A fellow villager who saw the two boys during the chaos said he could not believe they lived.
“They are only alive thanks to Allah,” said Ali Mia, a local leader. “God saved them.”
The boys then followed a stream of people, including some of their neighbours, on a two-day journey on foot to the Bangladeshi border – without food, through burn- ing villages, hearing distant gunfire. Jafar tried to comfort his younger brother. “I kept asking him not to cry,” he said. At the river crossing on the border, a grizzled smuggler refused to take them unless they each paid about $120, the boys said. A neighbour finally agreed to put up the money, and they followed the others to the refugee camp on the Bangladesh side.