Because no one asked: Archiving the Rohingya past

The Daily Star
By Naseef Faruque Amin
Sat Sep 6, 2025 

Visitors at Ek Khaale: Once Upon a Time, curated by Greg Constantine and organised by BRAC University’s Centre for Peace and Justice, engage with archival photographs that seek to reclaim the memory and dignity of the stateless Rohingyas. Courtesy: Greg Constantine 

It began with a question, the kind of question that arrives quietly, almost like a sigh. Greg Constantine, an American photojournalist and documentarian who has spent nearly two decades chronicling the plight of the Rohingya, sat inside a bamboo hut in Cox's Bazar, leaning towards the elderly men who were holding plastic bags filled with their pasts—brittle documents, photographs yellowed into sepia, certificates folded and refolded until the creases seemed older than the paper itself. He asked them, almost casually: Why have you never shown these to anyone else?

BRAC takes special initiative to support Rohingya fire victims

METRO
UNB, Dhaka
29 March, 2021

BRAC has taken up an initiative for rehabilitation of Rohingya refugees, who have been affected in a fire incident at Rohingya camps in Ukhiya upazila of Cox’s Bazar district.

Aided by the government, BRAC in coordination with development organisations started food distribution, supply of pure drinking water, construction of shelter and other emergency works at No. 8 and 9 Rohingya camps at Balukhali in Ukhiya.

On behalf of BRAC, 34,000 liters of water was distributed, 49 deep tube-well and 239 shallow tube-well repaired and 319 latrines repaired for the affected people till March 28, said a press release.

Humanitarian crisis management programme: Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh - January 2020

In Rohingya camps, a political awakening faces a backlash.

REUTERS
APRIL 24, 2019


Reporting by, Simon Lewis, Poppy McPherson, Ruma Paul

KUTUPALONG REFUGEE CAMP, Bangladesh (Reuters) - It was after Mohib Ullah scored his first political victories that the death threats began in earnest. On a recent morning, the Rohingya refugee leaned back on a plastic chair in the Bangladesh camp where he lives, and translated the latest warning, sent over the WhatsApp messaging app.

Mohib Ullah, a leader of Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights, is seen in his office in Kutupalong camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh April 7, 2019. Picture taken April 7, 2019. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain

“Mohib Ullah is a virus of the community,” he read aloud, with a wry chuckle. “Kill him wherever he is found.”

The 44-year-old leads the largest of several community groups to emerge since more than 730,000 Rohingya Muslims fled Myanmar after a military crackdown in August 2017.

New training project launched for women in Bangladesh refugee communities

Ekklesia

By agency reporter

APRIL 17, 2019

A new training project in southeast Bangladesh to promote self-reliance among women in communities hosting refugees, as well as among Rohingya refugee women, has become operational in Cox’s Bazar. The project is potentially a game-changer for women in these communities. It is being supported by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.

UNHCR has teamed up with the Ayesha Abed Foundation (AAF) – the humanitarian arm of our NGO partner BRAC – to support a programme designed to provide income opportunities by developing skills in craft production.