Man haunted by ‘real-life horror’ for refugees
Anwar Arkani made the long journey to Bangladesh last fall to help Rohingya refugees.
Now he is struggling to overcome the shock and grief of what he witnessed.
“People are dying everywhere,” said the Kitchener man. “It is real-life horror, not horror in the movies. Horror you can see with your eyes.”
Arkani has been back in Canada for several weeks, but he can’t escape what he saw.
He has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
As soon as he closes his eyes, whether it’s day or night, he relives the scenes: the skeletal, malnourished people; the faces of parents who saw their children thrown into burning homes; the accounts of women who were gang-raped.
More than 650,000 minority Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State have fled from Buddhist Myanmar since August. Most are children.
Myanmar’s military destroyed entire villages. They killed people by gunfire, or by burning them alive in their homes.
Those who survived made the long, dangerous journey to Bangladesh. Some of them now camp beneath plastic tarps on the hillsides, because the sprawling refugee camps are full.
Food is provided by the Bangladeshi army, but there isn’t enough of it. Elderly people and children don’t always know what to do, and don’t have the strength to fight for their share.
The faces of the people are a mix of horror and helplessness, Arkani said. Some of them, weakened by hunger, can barely move. Makeshift graves are everywhere.
“They become numb (and) at some point don’t care if they are dying,” he said. “Some people don’t care if anybody gives anything to them.”
Arkani understands their struggle. This isn’t the first time Muslim Rohingya people have been persecuted. He was a child in 1978 when he and his family fled an earlier wave of violence.
As a teenager, he came to Canada as a refugee. He settled in Kitchener, starting a Rohingya community that is now the largest in Canada. He went to university and got a good job. He started a school and became an interpreter for his community.
Last fall, he and friend Sayed Ahmed, also a Rohingya refugee, decided to raise some money and go to Bangladesh to help their people.
They took about $30,000. With it, they were able to pay boat operators to make 12 trips to bring desperate Rohingya people across the river to relative safety in Bangladesh.
They also bought and gave away 600 sacks of rice, 300 packages of cooked meat, and two truckloads of soap, toothpaste, sugar and vegetables.
They took the equivalent of $12,000 and gave the cash to families so they could buy plastic tarps for shelter, or dishes and pots to cook food.
Arkani worked hard and returned home exhausted. Physically, from the dust that covered him. Mentally, from the suffering he witnessed every day.
“I can’t sleep,” he said. “I can’t do anything.
“I did provide some temporary relief. Was I able to help save any lives? Not really. I was not able to bring one single person to safety.”
Arkani is very anxious about what happens next. The Bangladesh government has no wish to keep the refugees there, and other countries are not accepting large numbers of Rohingya refugees.
Sadly, that includes Canada. The citizens and governments of this country have donated about $50 million for aid and health care. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has appointed former Liberal MP Bob Rae as a special envoy to report on conditions there. There have been mild rebukes directed at Myanmar’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.
But a major influx of Rohingya refugees coming here, as happened in 2016 with Syrians fleeing civil war, is not in the cards.
Meanwhile, talks have started between Bangladesh and Myanmar to return the Rohingya refugees back to Myanmar.
Arkani is deeply alarmed by that proposal. “Is this a joke?” he said.
Months have gone by, people are dying en masse, and nothing is happening to help them, he said.
Everyone is “just talking. They’re talking. Is it helping people? No,” he said.
“I don’t think we live on a human planet.”