Rohingya refugees tune in to ‘WhatsApp radio’ for information
COX’ S B AZ AR, BANGLADESH: Sitting in his hillside grocery shop in a Bangladesh refugee camp, Rohingya Muslim Momtaz-ul-Hoque takes a break to listen to an audio recording on his mobile phone, while children and passers-by gather round to hear the latest news from Myanmar.
“I listen because I get some information on my motherland,” said Hoque, 30, as he plays a message on WhatsApp explaining the Myanmar government’s proposals for repatriating refugees.
Hoque has been in Bangladesh since an earlier bout of violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state in 1992, but the number of refugees in the camps has swelled dramatically to more than 800,000 in recent weeks, after a massive Myanmar military operation sent around 600,000 people fleeing across the border.
Tens of thousands of exhausted refugees have arrived with little more than a sack of rice, a few pots and pans and a mobile phone powered by a cheap solar battery, and many are desperate for news from home. With few news sources in their own language and low levels of literacy, audio and video messages distributed on apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube have become a community radio of sorts for the Muslim minority.
Dozens of WhatsApp groups have sprung up.
Their offerings range from grainy footage of violence, to listings of the names and numbers of people missing in the exodus, or even an explainer from educated Rohingya on how to adjust to life in the camps.