The foreign ministers of Germany, Sweden and Japan have visited a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh. German representative, Sigmar Gabriel, says it is necessary that refugees go back to Myanmar and rebuild their lives.
Image: Imago/photothek/U. Grabowsky
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Sigmar Gabriel, the German foreign minister, was accompanied by Taro Kono of Japan and Margot Wallstrom of Sweden on his Sunday visit to a refugee camp in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar district.
The UN estimates that since August more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh while being pursued by the Myanmar army.
Myanmar authorities are accused of carrying out a brutal and indiscriminate purge against Muslims. The violent crackdown came in response to attacks by Muslim insurgents on military security posts in Rakhine state in August.
The foreign ministers' visit to the refugee camp comes ahead of a meeting in the capital Dhaka with the Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali accompanied the ministers to the Kutupalong refugee camp near the border with Myanmar.
Talking to the media at the refugee camp, Gabriel said that Germany wanted to be more engaged in the international response to deal with the Rohingya crisis.
"Together with other colleagues from Sweden, from the European Union, from Japan, we want to have a discussion about the situation in Bangladesh and the Rohingya in Myanmar … Germany has decided to be more engaged, to pledge more to help the refugees and the local communities," Gabriel told reporters, including Harun Ur Rashid, DW's correspondent in Dhaka.
The German foreign minister stressed that the international community must find solutions so that the refugees could go back to their homes and rebuild their lives.
On Sunday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held talks with Myanmar authorities - a day after discussing the Rohingya issue with the Bangladeshi prime minister.
UN Rohingya conference pledges big money for refugees
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Rohingya – the controversial term
While talking about the refugees, Gabriel also used the term "Rohingya," which DW Bengali department's Arafatul Islam says foreign diplomats usually refrain from employing. Myanmar objects to the term in any UN resolution and says it makes the government's efforts more difficult in addressing the issue.
Myanmar's government has so far refused to grant citizenship to the Rohingya. It views the estimated 1.1 million people as illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh.
The Rohingya are an ethnic minority in Myanmar, which originates from the Indian subcontinent. For several centuries they have lived predominantly in Myanmar's western state of Rakhine also known as Arakan. They are predominately Muslim.
They are not officially recognized by the government as citizens and for decades Myanmar's Buddhist majority has been accused of subjecting them to discrimination and violence.
On August 25, violence broke out in Rakhine when around 100 armed Muslim insurgents attacked security guards in the border region with Bangladesh. Myanmar's security forces and Muslim minority Rohingya militants accuse each other of burning down villages and staging mass killings.
Refugees and human rights advocates say Myanmar's security forces committed widespread violence, including rape and the burning down of entire villages. A top UN human rights official called it a "textbook example" of ethnic cleansing.
Rohingya children: Raped, kidnapped, orphaned
The plight of the Rohingya Muslims forced to flee the atrocities committed by militants and the army in Myanmar is hard to stomach. The most vulnerable are children, as John Owens' photo series shows.
Image: DW/J. Owens
Shot and stabbed
Since August, more than 600,000 Rohingya have fled from Myanmar into Bangladesh. "The day the military came, they burnt down the village and shot my mother as she was trying to escape. My father couldn’t walk, so they stabbed him. I saw this with my own eyes," says 10-year-old Mohammed Belal who managed to run away from his village.
Image: DW/J. Owens
Haunted by the trauma
Mohammed’s sister Nur also watched the slaughter. She and her brother now live in a shelter for unaccompanied children in Bangladesh. She can play there and gets regular meals, a stark contrast to her journey from Myanmar where she and her brother nearly starved. But she is still haunted by the trauma of the recent weeks. "I miss my parents, my home, my country," she says.
Image: DW/J. Owens
Deep-rooted conflict
The conflict, which has been going on for 70 years and is rooted in the post-World War II social organization of the country, has claimed more than 2,000 victims since 2016, including the mother of 12-year-old Rahman, above. "They set fire to my home, and my mother was ill, so she could not leave," he says.
Image: DW/J. Owens
Save the children
Dilu-Aara, 5, came to the camp with her sister Rojina after she witnessed her parents being murdered by the military. "I was crying all the time and the bullets were flying over our heads. I escaped somehow." The international aid agency Save the Children is helping minors who come to Kutupalong without parents. Children make up to 60 percent of all Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.
Image: DW/J. Owens
Hunted like animals
Jaded Alam is among the hundreds of kids who came to Kutupalong without parents. Fortunately, his aunt cares for him — and very well, he admits. Jaded grew up in a village called Mandi Para where he used to love playing football, but everything changed when the military attacked. "They told us to leave our home. When I was running with my parents, they shot them. They died on the spot," he says.
Image: DW/J. Owens
Child abductions
Not all families have been separated during their plight, however. Rahman Ali has been scouring the refugee camp for weeks now after his 10-year-old son Zifad disappeared. Rumors of child abductions have swirled around the camp for years, and Rahman fears his son has fallen prey to human traffickers. "I can't eat, I can’t sleep. I’m so upset! It’s like I’ve gone mad."
Image: DW/J. Owens
"My mind is not normal"
When the shooting started, Sokina Khatun did all she could to protect her children — but she couldn't save Yasmine,15, and Jamalita, 20, who were in a neighboring village at the time. "Their throats were cut in front of their grandparents," she says. "I was numb, I couldn’t feel the pain. Right now my mind is not normal," she says. She managed to rescue nine of her offspring.
Image: DW/J. Owens
Attacked, raped and robbed
Yasmine thinks she might be 15 but looks considerably younger. In her village, she used to play with marbles and run in the nearby fields, but different memories haunt her now: The attack by Myanmar forces, the beating and murder of her beloved father and brothers, and the rape by a group of Burmese soldiers who also robbed her. "I felt lots of pain in my body," she says.
