Fleeing Rohingyas build homes in tent city
BALUKHALI, Bangladesh: Rohimullah stood at the precipice of this vast tent city last Friday, chest heaving, eyes reddened by exhaustion, his hunchbacked mother-inlaw cradled in his arms. He’d carried her for five days. She’d winced and whimpered at every step.
The rest of his family had arrived days earlier, and their reunion was imminent. Moving towards the plot his relatives had carved out of a hillock to camp on, they passed thousands of fellow Rohingya refugees building homes for now that may become homes for much longer.
Nearly half of the 436 000 Rohingya who have fled a scorched-earth campaign by the Myanmar military over the past month now live in and around Balukhali, and the small tent city grows by the minute. The refugees are part of the most rapid exodus from any country since the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The sudden crush of people has left Bangladesh’s government, aid agencies and refugees totally overwhelmed.
To Rohimullah’s left as he walked, women crafted a mud staircase leading up to a whole neighbourhood of tents still under construction. To his right, sweat-soaked men hauled bundles of bamboo and tarpaulins to tracts farther afield. Under his feet were the freshly laid bricks of an arterial road.
His pace picked up in the final stretch – up a hill, along a ridge, until finally his family came into sight. He laid his mother-in-law down in the tent, where she wordlessly fell asleep. He lit a cigarette. Before him, undulating hills of tents spread out as far as the eye could see.
“It just keeps hitting me that we’ve made it, and we’re in Bangladesh,” said Rohimullah, 25, and, like many Rohingya, uses only one name. “We’re safe now.”
Though they’ve escaped their burning villages, a longer ordeal is just beginning for most Rohingya survivors.
Since violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state flared on August 25, tens of thousands arrived here each day. The flow has slowed in recent days, but the dizzying task of feeding, sheltering and administering medical care to so many people is just getting started.
The most overwhelming aspect is the sheer scale. Balukhali has essentially merged with Kutupalong, an adjacent camp that is home to more than 200 000 Rohingya who fled similar ethnic violence in the early 1990s. Together they account for nearly half a million people, making it one of the largest and densest refugee concentrations in the world.
Only about a fifth of the new arrivals have received an official food ration, which consists of rice and fortified biscuits. Aid agencies warn that existing water sources could be drained dry in just a few months. Nearly 100 000 children have no school to attend and are instead helping their families fight for whatever aid they can get.