A group of refugees at the Kutupalong Rohingya camp near Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh expressed doubt about the camps Myanmar has agreed to establish on its side of the border.
Mohammad Farouk, 20, who arrived in Bangladesh following the Aug. 25 attacks, said exchanging one camp for another made little difference - except “the camps in Myanmar will be far worse, because we will be confined there and there will be a risk to our lives.”
Another resident of the Kutupalong camp compared the new transit camps to ones set up near the Rakhine state capital of Sittwe following bouts of violence in previous years “where people are living like prisoners.”
“First, ask the military to give those Rohingya their homes and property back, then talk to us about returning,” said the Rohingya refugee, who did not want to be identified.
Some said the kind of violence they witnessed toward their community in Myanmar made it hard for them to trust the military. “Even if I don’t get food or anything else here, at least there is safety. I won’t feel safe if I go back to Myanmar,” said Rashid Ahmed, 33.
Some young men in the camp worried they might be arrested on accusations of terrorism if they returned to Myanmar.
Camp conditions in Bangladesh are dire enough, but more than 520,000 Rohingya children are at even greater risk ahead of the cyclone season that generally begins in April, the United Nations Children’s Fund said on Tuesday.
“They will face an even greater risk of disease, flooding, landslides and further displacement,” said Edouard Beigbeder, the UNICEF Representative in Bangladesh.
Nearly 1 million Rohingya live in Bangladesh, including those who came after previous displacements dating back to the 1990s.
Reporting by Ruma Paul and Yi-mou Lee; Additional reporting by Zeba Siddiqui in Cox's Bazar, Shoon Naing and Serajul Quadir in Dhaka, Michelle Nichols at the United Nations and Arshad Mohammed in Washington; Editing by Frances Kerry, David Alexander and Leslie Adler