Aid worker’s warning over desperate muslim refugees
AN aid worker from Oldham who is caring for persecuted Rohingya Muslim refugees has warned that the crisis will worsen in the new year.
Caroline Holt, a Red Cross worker, says the plight of the 650,000 people who have fled Burma cannot afford to ‘slip off the radar’.
Ms Holt has helped set up a hospital in a refugee camp in the town of Cox’s Bazar, in Bangladesh, and says she has never seen such ‘desperate and terrified looks in people’s eyes’.
The 43-year-old warned the crisis had not yet ‘peaked’ as she called on the public to continue offering support. “This isn’t going anywhere, these people don’t have anywhere to go back to,” she said. “They’ve faced the most traumatic time over recent months and yet come through it with this strength and dignity and completely deserve our support - need our support. The resources are limited and we still need more funds. It can’t afford to slip off the radar.”
Rohingya Muslims have described a systematic campaign of murder and violence, which the United Nations has branded as ‘ethnic cleansing.’ Burmese authorities have blamed the trouble on Rohingya militants.
Refugees who make the arduous journey to Bangladesh are often traumatised, injured and in need of medical support.
Ms Holt spent a month as a deputy team leader with the International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC) field hospital in Cox’s Bazar in October.
Ms Holt, who has worked with the Red Cross in disaster zones for 13 years, said: “I have never seen the faces... I’ve never seen the eyes, the sort of desperate and terrified looks in people’s eyes.”