Frontier
MYANMAR
By OLIVER SLOW | FRONTIER
February 8, 2023
A Rohingya refugee at a camp Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar district. (Steve Tickner | Frontier)
In an adapted extract from his new book Return of the Junta: Why Myanmar’s military must go back to the barracks, journalist Oliver Slow reports on his September 2017 trip to the refugee camps in Bangladesh at the height of the Myanmar military’s crackdown against the Rohingya. At the time an editor with Frontier, he travelled with staff photographer Steve Tickner, and the pair documented the desperation those arriving faced, as well as the violence they had endured at the hands of the military.
At 120 kilometres in length, Cox’s Bazar is often billed as the longest beach in the world, and it’s a point of pride for many Bangladeshis, who often travel there for weekend breaks.
Sadly, it is now better known for the sprawling refugee camps to the south, which are home to about a million refugees, mainly Rohingya, the majority of which have fled from neighbouring Rakhine State in Myanmar since August 2017.
Arriving in the main town early in the morning, Steve and I found a hotel, dropped our bags in the room and headed straight down to the camps, about an hour’s journey by car.
Along the way, we collected Shamimul Islam who would work as our translator during our week there. Shamimul was a Rohingya refugee who had fled northern Rakhine with his family during the violence of the early 1990s and lived on the camp’s outskirts.
As we drove south towards Kutupalong, the largest refugee camp in the area, Shamimul explained how proud he was to work with the media and to help document what was happening to his people.
Along the way, we collected Shamimul Islam who would work as our translator during our week there. Shamimul was a Rohingya refugee who had fled northern Rakhine with his family during the violence of the early 1990s and lived on the camp’s outskirts.
As we drove south towards Kutupalong, the largest refugee camp in the area, Shamimul explained how proud he was to work with the media and to help document what was happening to his people.
“We’ve had it bad for so many years,” he said, as we passed crowds of people queuing for food to be distributed. “But what I’ve seen these past few weeks is as bad as it’s ever been. Wait until you see the scale of the suffering.”
Shortly after, we rounded a corner and there ahead of us were the camps. Basic shelters were packed into every available space; high on hills, or in thick forests, were tiny structures made up of nothing more than a piece of tarpaulin held up by bamboo. The only areas where there weren’t houses were the huge pools of filthy stagnant water that had filled up as a result of the rainy season. In these pools, which were no doubt a hive of diseases, young children played and women washed their hair and utensils.
There were people everywhere. The narrow road that jutted through the camps was packed either side with people, who were marching determinedly in different directions, some carrying materials back to their homes, while others were sat by the side of the road, staring ahead into the distance.
On the first day, we conducted interviews with about a dozen people. Their stories were all gruesome, and difficult to hear, but also remarkably similar.
All were Rohingya and had lived their entire lives in northern Rakhine, although some with brief stints in Bangladesh. All said relations between the Buddhist and Muslim communities in their home villages had been relatively good until the October 2016 attacks on police and army posts by militant group the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, which sparked a brutally disproportionate response from the Myanmar military and local vigilantes.
All said soldiers – sometimes alongside Buddhist neighbours – had come to forcefully remove them from their homes shortly after larger-scale ARSA attacks on security posts on August 25, 2017, which the military responded to with even greater brutality than the year before, driving about 700,000 Rohingya across the border to Bangladesh. Some said they were told to leave before the violence started; others said the violence, which included the burning of homes and shooting at people fleeing, started immediately. All had family members killed.
“My husband is dead. Now we have nothing”, said one lady who was cradling a child who was only a few months old.
The desperation was confronting too. At one camp, a fight broke out after a man began distributing vouchers for the collection of tarpaulins. The scene quickly grew chaotic; the frustrated man threw the vouchers into the air, prompting a wild scramble.
At another camp there was more order as a small group of men waited patiently for food.
Standing at the edge of the crowd I met Rajuma Begum. She was holding her infant child as three other children stood patiently next to her. Her husband had been killed during an attack on their village by security forces and vigilantes, she said.
“I’m not receiving any food,” she told me as she stroked the head of one of her young sons. “All we have is a small amount of rice, but it is not enough. I’m just depending on Allah.”
At the end of an emotional and exhausting day’s reporting, we were travelling back towards our hotel at Cox’s Bazar. I was drifting asleep in the back of the car when I heard Steve shout for the driver to stop.
He had seen a man lying by the side of the road, looking severely malnourished, and we rushed back to speak with him.
With Shamimul translating through conversations with his wife, who was accompanying him, we learned that the man’s name was Sayed Akbar, and he had arrived in Bangladesh from northern Rakhine about a week previously following the military’s violence.
With his ribs sticking through his skin, and with barely enough strength to lift his head, it was clear the man was dying. His wife said she had taken him to a nearby clinic, which gave him some medicine but said there was nothing more they could do for him.
We tried to figure out how we could help but there was little we could do. We left some water and money for the wife and returned to our hotel.
Shortly after, we rounded a corner and there ahead of us were the camps. Basic shelters were packed into every available space; high on hills, or in thick forests, were tiny structures made up of nothing more than a piece of tarpaulin held up by bamboo. The only areas where there weren’t houses were the huge pools of filthy stagnant water that had filled up as a result of the rainy season. In these pools, which were no doubt a hive of diseases, young children played and women washed their hair and utensils.
There were people everywhere. The narrow road that jutted through the camps was packed either side with people, who were marching determinedly in different directions, some carrying materials back to their homes, while others were sat by the side of the road, staring ahead into the distance.
On the first day, we conducted interviews with about a dozen people. Their stories were all gruesome, and difficult to hear, but also remarkably similar.
All were Rohingya and had lived their entire lives in northern Rakhine, although some with brief stints in Bangladesh. All said relations between the Buddhist and Muslim communities in their home villages had been relatively good until the October 2016 attacks on police and army posts by militant group the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, which sparked a brutally disproportionate response from the Myanmar military and local vigilantes.
All said soldiers – sometimes alongside Buddhist neighbours – had come to forcefully remove them from their homes shortly after larger-scale ARSA attacks on security posts on August 25, 2017, which the military responded to with even greater brutality than the year before, driving about 700,000 Rohingya across the border to Bangladesh. Some said they were told to leave before the violence started; others said the violence, which included the burning of homes and shooting at people fleeing, started immediately. All had family members killed.
“My husband is dead. Now we have nothing”, said one lady who was cradling a child who was only a few months old.
The desperation was confronting too. At one camp, a fight broke out after a man began distributing vouchers for the collection of tarpaulins. The scene quickly grew chaotic; the frustrated man threw the vouchers into the air, prompting a wild scramble.
At another camp there was more order as a small group of men waited patiently for food.
Standing at the edge of the crowd I met Rajuma Begum. She was holding her infant child as three other children stood patiently next to her. Her husband had been killed during an attack on their village by security forces and vigilantes, she said.
“I’m not receiving any food,” she told me as she stroked the head of one of her young sons. “All we have is a small amount of rice, but it is not enough. I’m just depending on Allah.”
At the end of an emotional and exhausting day’s reporting, we were travelling back towards our hotel at Cox’s Bazar. I was drifting asleep in the back of the car when I heard Steve shout for the driver to stop.
He had seen a man lying by the side of the road, looking severely malnourished, and we rushed back to speak with him.
With Shamimul translating through conversations with his wife, who was accompanying him, we learned that the man’s name was Sayed Akbar, and he had arrived in Bangladesh from northern Rakhine about a week previously following the military’s violence.
With his ribs sticking through his skin, and with barely enough strength to lift his head, it was clear the man was dying. His wife said she had taken him to a nearby clinic, which gave him some medicine but said there was nothing more they could do for him.
We tried to figure out how we could help but there was little we could do. We left some water and money for the wife and returned to our hotel.
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I thought about Sayed Akbar, lying by that road side, all night, but more death and despair was awaiting us in the camps the next morning. We were travelling through the camps once more, on our way to Teknaf, at Bangladesh’s southern tip, when we passed a funeral taking place at the roadside. Through broken interviews with the family, we learned that a man had been run over by a truck the night before while he was walking home from prayers at a nearby mosque – an example of the suffering the Rohingya still faced, even when they made it to the relative safety of Bangladesh.
We continued to Teknaf, from where we took a boat to Shah Porir, an island right by the Myanmar border. It was here that many Rohingya had arrived by boat. A Bangladeshi soldier patrolling the shore told us that the number of arrivals had slowed in recent days, but that some were still arriving during the night.
We were then taken to a nearby mosque, which was being used as a refuge for those still arriving in Bangladesh. There we met Jashim Uddin, a Bangladeshi man in his thirties who was managing the site. He told us that about 40,000 people had taken shelter there in the past month before moving onto the mainland.
We also met many of the new arrivals, and their stories were all heartbreaking. There was the young mother, huddled in the corner with her three young daughters, whose husband had been killed in the violence. Or the woman sat alone, staring into the distance. She said she had some family at one of the camps in southern Bangladesh and that she hoped to find them.
One person we met whose story has stayed with me ever since was Nurul Amin, an elderly man who we met sitting on a bench outside the mosque.
He told us he had left his village on the outskirts of Sittwe, the Rakhine state capital, in late August and travelled north to visit relatives living in Rathedaung Township. The timing of his trip coincided with the August 25 attacks by the ARSA, and Nurul Amin found himself caught up in the ensuing crackdown.
“Suddenly the violence started,” he told me. ‘The military, along with a group of Rakhine, started attacking people and burning villages. I tried to go back home, but it was not possible.”
Nurul Amin, who was 65 when I spoke to him, then spent the next three weeks hiding in the villages of northern Rakhine. Eventually, he paid a fee to a broker to take a boat over the Naf River to Bangladesh.
“I have spoken with my family. They know that I am here, that I am safe,” he said. “It’s too risky for me to go back. The situation is very difficult, and I cannot move anywhere.”
The next day we travelled several hours east of Cox’s Bazar to Naikongchari, a small village, from where we hoped to walk the several hours to the border, to an area where some of the refugee camps were located.
We weren’t sure what to expect and Shamimul warned us that there was a good chance we would be turned back at Naikongchari by the Bangladeshi soldiers stationed there.
Sure enough, moments after our car reached the eastern outskirts of the village, a soldier walked into the road and ordered our car to stop. We were beckoned towards a wooden hut, inside which a gruff soldier demanded our passports.
We sat waiting for half an hour as the soldier barked commands into his walkie-talkie.
“Major General will see you,” he said, eventually, as if we were waiting for a dental appointment.
We waited patiently once more, a little tentative about what our audience with the major general would involve. As we waited, about half a dozen of his minions cleaned around us and brought out plates of fresh fruit, biscuits and cups of tea. Then the major general emerged, proudly dressed in his finest military uniform.
As we shook hands, he let out a beaming smile. “Nice to meet you, gentlemen,” he said in impeccable, unaccented English.
He proudly told us he had spent a few happy summers in the United Kingdom and wanted to spend some time speaking with, as he put it, “some proper English gentlemen” (this didn’t go down too well with Steve, an out-and-out Aussie from rural Queensland, but he knew better than to argue).
We sat with the major general for about an hour, talking English literature (he was particularly fond of Byron), cricket and English summers. I smiled, nodded and pretended that my summers of drinking Lambrini under a slide in a Dartford park were similar to his revelries in the Cotswolds.
The conversation eventually turned towards the conflict that had been happening over the border.
“You know, I used to be stationed up at the border with India, and life was very peaceful”, he said. ‘But with Myanmar . . . it’s different.”
He said that in the days following the August 25 attacks, aircraft from Myanmar had entered Bangladeshi airspace, which he believed was a clear provocation.
The major general said that relations had largely calmed down since then, but that there were still occasional flare-ups.
We continued to Teknaf, from where we took a boat to Shah Porir, an island right by the Myanmar border. It was here that many Rohingya had arrived by boat. A Bangladeshi soldier patrolling the shore told us that the number of arrivals had slowed in recent days, but that some were still arriving during the night.
We were then taken to a nearby mosque, which was being used as a refuge for those still arriving in Bangladesh. There we met Jashim Uddin, a Bangladeshi man in his thirties who was managing the site. He told us that about 40,000 people had taken shelter there in the past month before moving onto the mainland.
We also met many of the new arrivals, and their stories were all heartbreaking. There was the young mother, huddled in the corner with her three young daughters, whose husband had been killed in the violence. Or the woman sat alone, staring into the distance. She said she had some family at one of the camps in southern Bangladesh and that she hoped to find them.
One person we met whose story has stayed with me ever since was Nurul Amin, an elderly man who we met sitting on a bench outside the mosque.
He told us he had left his village on the outskirts of Sittwe, the Rakhine state capital, in late August and travelled north to visit relatives living in Rathedaung Township. The timing of his trip coincided with the August 25 attacks by the ARSA, and Nurul Amin found himself caught up in the ensuing crackdown.
“Suddenly the violence started,” he told me. ‘The military, along with a group of Rakhine, started attacking people and burning villages. I tried to go back home, but it was not possible.”
Nurul Amin, who was 65 when I spoke to him, then spent the next three weeks hiding in the villages of northern Rakhine. Eventually, he paid a fee to a broker to take a boat over the Naf River to Bangladesh.
“I have spoken with my family. They know that I am here, that I am safe,” he said. “It’s too risky for me to go back. The situation is very difficult, and I cannot move anywhere.”
The next day we travelled several hours east of Cox’s Bazar to Naikongchari, a small village, from where we hoped to walk the several hours to the border, to an area where some of the refugee camps were located.
We weren’t sure what to expect and Shamimul warned us that there was a good chance we would be turned back at Naikongchari by the Bangladeshi soldiers stationed there.
Sure enough, moments after our car reached the eastern outskirts of the village, a soldier walked into the road and ordered our car to stop. We were beckoned towards a wooden hut, inside which a gruff soldier demanded our passports.
We sat waiting for half an hour as the soldier barked commands into his walkie-talkie.
“Major General will see you,” he said, eventually, as if we were waiting for a dental appointment.
We waited patiently once more, a little tentative about what our audience with the major general would involve. As we waited, about half a dozen of his minions cleaned around us and brought out plates of fresh fruit, biscuits and cups of tea. Then the major general emerged, proudly dressed in his finest military uniform.
As we shook hands, he let out a beaming smile. “Nice to meet you, gentlemen,” he said in impeccable, unaccented English.
He proudly told us he had spent a few happy summers in the United Kingdom and wanted to spend some time speaking with, as he put it, “some proper English gentlemen” (this didn’t go down too well with Steve, an out-and-out Aussie from rural Queensland, but he knew better than to argue).
We sat with the major general for about an hour, talking English literature (he was particularly fond of Byron), cricket and English summers. I smiled, nodded and pretended that my summers of drinking Lambrini under a slide in a Dartford park were similar to his revelries in the Cotswolds.
The conversation eventually turned towards the conflict that had been happening over the border.
“You know, I used to be stationed up at the border with India, and life was very peaceful”, he said. ‘But with Myanmar . . . it’s different.”
He said that in the days following the August 25 attacks, aircraft from Myanmar had entered Bangladeshi airspace, which he believed was a clear provocation.
The major general said that relations had largely calmed down since then, but that there were still occasional flare-ups.
An unofficial refugee camp in a no-man’s-land between Myanmar and Bangladesh. (Steve Tickner | Frontier)For years after our audience, I stayed in touch with the major general on WhatsApp, and we messaged from time to time. More than a year later, news emerged of Myanmar building up forces near the Bangladeshi border, and I messaged him to ask about it.
“Brother, I have no idea, I’m sorry,” came the response. “I’m with our Indian brothers again, and life is very peaceful.”
After our audience, we made the two-hour walk to the border, where the refugee camps were located. The major general had phoned ahead, and the Bangladeshi soldiers stationed there were expecting us. After some negotiation, they allowed us to enter the area where the camp was located, which was technically in a no-man’s-land between the two countries.
We entered the camps and spoke with the families there. As we were nearing the end of an interview with a family that had arrived in the camps just a few days before, Shamimul picked up snippets of a conversation taking place to the side.
“Ask them about landmines,” he whispered in my ear.
One of the men we were interviewing quickly explained that a few days earlier two men had been killed by landmines nearby. The villagers then took us to the area where the incident had taken place.
We were taken to the last house in the village, which stood on a hill at the bottom of which sat a small river. Next to the stream was a single discarded bag of detergent.
“People used to go there to wash, but not anymore,” said one of the camp’s residents.
Villagers told us that a Rohingya man and three of his buffalo were killed by an initial explosion. A Bangladeshi man who volunteered to go into the heavily forested area to retrieve the body was then killed by a separate detonation – his body was retrieved by the Bangladeshi military, residents said.
“Because people think there are still landmines, the [Rohingya] man’s body is still out there,” said one of the camp’s residents. She said she had heard one of the explosions and had seen the Bangladeshi man’s body being carried away.
Several of the camp’s residents told us that they had seen Tatmadaw soldiers walking close to the border hours before the explosions and accused them of laying the landmines.
In a separate incident on the same day, at another no-man’s-land about 50 kilometres south, a Rohingya woman lost both her legs after stepping on a mine close to the border fence.
We visited that area the day after travelling to Naikongchari, and residents there told us that they had seen Tatmadaw soldiers near the border fence hours before the explosion happened.
“We could see the military coming down the hill, and then sometimes they would sit down. We could see them sitting down, but couldn’t see what they were doing,” said Forid Alam. “After they left, we went to try and find out what was happening and that was when we found the landmines.”
He said that shortly after, camp residents heard an explosion and later learned that the woman had stepped on a landmine. Forid sent me a video showing her being carried across a river, both legs severed below the knee.
The despair we encountered during a week reporting in Cox’s Bazar didn’t end there. We also met about half a dozen survivors of Tula Toli, a village in northern Rakhine known in Myanmar as Minn Gyi. Tula Toli was the scene of one of the biggest massacres against the Rohingya.
Survivors said that when the military arrived, they told people to go to the riverbank where they would be safe. Some villagers believed them and ran to the river, while most of those we spoke to ran in the other direction, towards the forest.
Those we spoke to said they had stood on a hilltop as they watched soldiers massacre their friends and family, who had thought they would be safe running to the riverside. The only Tula Toli resident we interviewed who hadn’t fled to the hills was a 10-year-old girl, who said she only survived because she jumped into the river when soldiers lined the villagers up and told them they would be killed. She witnessed her mother and sisters burned to death in front of her, she said.
We also met kids as young as three who had seen family members killed in front of them and a man in his mid-20s who had returned home after visiting a relative to find his children and wife massacred.
“I turned on the light, and there they were. All dead,” he said.
Return of the Junta will be released on February 23. Click here for links on how to buy it.
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