Genocide
Bangladesh 🇧🇩 “I escaped from my country of origin to save my life and my family from the brutality of Myanmar government, the military and the Rakhine extremists who persecuted and killed Rohingya Muslims without any reasons. I became a refugee in 2017 with my wife and three children. I owned land in Myanmar and I used to cultivate it to earn a living. My life was pleasant with everything I had before 2012, when atrocities erupted. After that, we Rohingya Muslims could not enjoy free movement, we had to take permission from the village chairman to visit our relatives in other villages and to go to the market. There were restrictions on everything like marriages, business, daily life and work.
Every night, the military used to come to villages to take away the men and young boys to make them work like laborers to carry their luggage, cut bamboo and trees from the forest to build their camps without any payment. If anyone failed to do the work, he used to be beaten severely. People were injured, traumatized and some died. Our children could not go to school, Madrasa or college. Some children from rich families used to go to primary level schools but they had to use Burmese names to escape discrimination from the Buddhists teachers and classmates. If they find someone with a Muslims name, they would be mocked, subjected to hate speech and beaten.”
This is part of a series of candid accounts from the world’s largest refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.
