Rohingya Activist Recalls Devastation at World’s Most Densely Populated Refugee Camp in Bangladesh
April 27, 2018
Extended conversation with Rohingya activist Tun Khin, who visited the world’s most densely populated refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, earlier this month. The UN Security Council is visiting Burma and Bangladesh starting this week to assess the state of the Rohingya. Hundreds of thousands of registered Rohingya refugees now live in the Cox’s Bazar district in southeastern Bangladesh after fleeing a Burmese military campaign of rape, murder and arson that the U.N. has called a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” Now Aid agencies are scrambling to relocate tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees from crowded camps in Bangladesh ahead of the monsoon season in June. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says at least 150,000 people are at “high risk from mudslides and floods” from the heavy rain in the next few months. This comes as more refugees are still crossing over from Burma. Last week, Burma’s Social Welfare, Relief, and Resettlement Minister Win Myat Aye said Burma will start repatriation of Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh ahead of the monsoon. But Tun Khin, President of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK and a member of the Free Rohingya Coalition, says repatriation without international protection will have devastating effects. We are joined in our New York studio by Tun Khin. He was born in Burma, but in 1982 he was rendered effectively stateless along with a million other ethnic Rohingya under a nationality law.
