Rohingya facing a difficult Ramadan in refugee camps
Nearly 700,000 are stuck in Bangladesh after fleeing violence in Myanmar
The 12-year-old Rohingya refugee dreamed of Ramadan back in his own village — fish to break the day’s fast, gifts from his family and relaxing beneath the trees before evening prayers at the mosque.
But for M.D. Hashim and others like him living in squalor in Bangladesh, the start of the Islamic holy month now serves as a bitter reminder of everything they have lost since being driven from Myanmar in an army crackdown.
“Here, we can’t afford gifts and don’t have good food ... because this is not our country,” Hashim said on a barren hillside in Cox’s Bazar district.
The United Nations has described the army purge against the persecuted minority as ethnic cleansing, and thousands of Rohingya Muslims were believed to have been slaughtered in the pogrom that began last August.
Nearly 700,000 Rohingya fled the violence for Bangladesh, where they squat in bamboo and tarpaulin shacks on dirt slopes.
‘We can’t earn money’
While they acknowledge that they were lucky to escape, now, with food and money scarce and temperatures soaring, Ramadan looms as a source of anxiety for many Rohingya.
Sitting inside a plastic tent on a blazing day, Hashim fondly recalled the simple pleasures that made Ramadan the most exciting time of year in his village. Each night, friends and family would break the fast together with fish and meat.
New clothes would be offered and sprinkled with traditional perfumes called “attar” to mark the holiday, he said.
“We can’t do the same here, because we don’t have money. We don’t have our own land. We can’t earn money because we are not allowed,” he said.