Bangladesh

Today I went to the third, and final, place where we are doing medical clinics, in the area of Dakshin Bedkashi. You really have to watch out for high tide, because you can only pass through certain places at low tide. Otherwise, where the pathway is broken, you have to go up to your chest through water with strong currents.

On Tuesday, July 14, Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) witnessed a group of approximately 30 police officers and local officials enter the Kutupalong makeshift camp in Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh, and destroy 259 homes, looting people’s possessions in the process. Other residents of the makeshift camp were told that they had 48 hours to leave or their homes would be burned down.

It is my third day here in Satkira District of Bangladesh. About six weeks ago, this place was inundated with water when Cyclone Aila hit and broke many levees in a region where people live at or below sea level. The result was much like Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Nearly two months after Cyclone Aila devastated East India and the coast of Bangladesh, the plight of survivors is no longer headline news. However, daily flooding is making their recovery almost impossible.

One month after cyclone Aila struck Bangladesh and the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, people continue to suffer from ongoing floods during high tide. Shelter, drinking water, food and sanitation are badly needed. People in remote areas have reportedly still not received any help.

Laila is one of 25,000 unregistered Rohingya refugees in the area who have sought a safe place to live on the outskirts of the state-endorsed refugee camp supported by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Unlike their approximately 10,000 registered counterparts, the unregistered refugees in Kutupalong struggle to survive day to day, living in squalid conditions, vulnerable to ill health and exploitation.

Kutupalong, Bangladesh, June 18, 2009—Thousands of unregistered Rohingya refugees living in the Kutupalong makeshift camp, Bangladesh, are being forcibly displaced from their homes, in an act of intimidation and abuse by the local authorities.

MSF was recently alerted to a growing health crisis in the Kutupalong area of Bangladesh, where thousands of Rohingya—a Muslim ethnic minority originating from northern Rakhine state in Myanmar—are struggling to survive unassisted in a makeshift camp.

Weak, dehydrated, and traumatized, the Rohingya people who arrive on Thailand’s shores, after crossing the Andaman Sea from western Myanmar, come with alarming stories.

Due to difficult access to the isolated islands off the coast of Bangladesh, some communities have still received little aid. Maria Teresa de Magalahaes is part of the MSF emergency team sent to assess the situation and identify villages in need of assistance in the most remote areas of Barguna and Patuakhali districts.

The Rohingyas are a Muslim minority from the border region between Bangladesh and Rakhine State in western Myanmar (formerly Burma). Their accounts of life in Myanmar include severe human rights abuses: restrictions on movement and on marriage; forced labor; land and assets confiscation; violence and arbitrary arrest.

Some areas of the conflict-plagued Chittagong Hill Tracts in southeast Bangladesh are so remote they are only accessible by foot. MSF provides basic medical care in the area, with a focus on treating malaria.