A picture crying out to be taken

‘Isaw this small boy to the left of my view. He had pulled himself up onto the truck and was weeping. I couldn’t hear much because the scene was so loud, but at one point the boy reached out his hand and tapped the leg of the man standing over the food.

“He then wrapped his arms around the man’s leg, begging with tears rolling down his cheeks. I was struck by it: this vulnerable child in a massive crowd had clawed his way onto the truck in complete desperation. It is hard to compare that magnitude of sadness to anything else I have seen.”

Photojournalist Kevin Frayer describes his haunting images of Rohingya Muslim refugees, persecuted in their homeland of Myanmar for their religion, only to suffer more misery, starvation and rape as refugees in neighbouring Muslim Bangladesh.

“Leaving was not easy. I had gone with the hope of making a contribution to telling the story, yet you always feel like you never photograph enough. Or see enough. Or hear enough.”

Pictures: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images PLEA OF HUNGER A Rohingya refugee boy desperate for food cries as he climbs onto a truck distributing aid for a local NGO near the Balukali refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

A Rohingya refugee woman is helped from a boat as she arrives exhausted on the Bangladesh side of the Naf River, at Shah Porir Dwip, after fleeing from her village in Myanmar.

A refugee uses a candle to light her tent at the Palongkali refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar.

A refugee holds her child as she stands outside her shelter at the sprawling Balukali refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

A cleric touches the head of a refugee as she asks for food while her companions rest in an Islamic school after arriving by boat in Bangladesh.