It is one of the most densely populated and at the same time the poorest countries in the world. There are more than one thousand inhabitants here per one square kilometer. The country’s population is almost 150 million. In the neighboring Myanmar, since mid-2017, thousands of the Rohingya people have lost their lives, their villages have been burned down, and the survivors approached the border with Bangladesh. Within several months, more than 750 refugees settled in the border area.
06.03.2023
First there is a loud cracking sound. Later there is smoke. Finally, flames shoot up. You can hear them roaring. The ground trembles.
Yesterday afternoon, the world’s largest refugee camp went up in flames again.
For the Rohingya people, the flames are their biggest nightmare. In August 2017, Burmese generals carried out an ethnic cleansing of the Muslim minority. At that time, everything was burning. Entire villages, animals, adults and children were killed in the fire. Nearly a million Rohingya people made their way to Bangladesh. However, no one was waiting for them here.
The lives of each of them, no matter if they were once rich or poor, were confined to a few meters of bamboo shelter and an adjacent stream of flowing sewage. They are cramped, deprived of basic rights; deprived of the ability to work, study and leave the camp. They have not had their own place in the world for five years.
Two years ago, a large part of the camp burned down. The Rohingya people are not allowed to settle; hence the temporary shacks. The jungle of dry reeds, bamboo and leaves – shelter for 60,000 people – disappeared in flames within hours.
Yesterday – once again. Crackling and smoke. In the end, the flames consumed 2,000 temporary homes. The area resembles a moonscape. In the scorched earth, residents are finding the ruins of their shacks. They try to find anything that might have survived. Hope that they will make it is the only thing they have.
The Rohingya people have lived for years with unhealed wounds inflicted on their bodies and psyches. For years they have been unable to heal through tragedy after tragedy and harsh, inhospitable daily life.
The Good Factory is with the neediest families. We want them to experience good at last, instead of cruel evil. A hand extended towards them, with a supply of water, a meal, a sleeping mat, a cure for pain, means even more today. It assures them that the world has not forgotten them. That they also have friends. To become one of these friends, visit GoodWorks 24/7.
29.06.2023
Fires and floods are two elements they have to live with, but they are being killed by most of the world looking the other way. Neither Bangladesh nor Myanmar wants to remember the Rohingya people. Driven by machetes and fire from their own homes, they are trying to build a new one among a hostile […]
26.05.2023
Their own backs protected their children from the flames and from scenes straight out of their worst nightmares. In the Rohingya camp, it is hard to find a mother whose burns would not betray the kind of hell she and her children literally went through. A hell from which she carried them out in her […]
19.01.2023
For as long as she can remember she has lived with the stigma of being Rohingya. In her youth, she still had a Burmese identity card. Her children and grandchildren no longer do. Amina died yesterday in the largest refugee camp in the world. She had no rights; she didn’t belong anywhere. The world had […]
