Shuprova Tasneem
June 20, 2021
June 20, 2021
And other questions that haunt refugees
I first met six-year-old Amina in the Kutupalong refugee camp in 2019. I couldn't help noticing the forlorn image of life in the camps she depicted—a child alone in a corner, playing with a pair of matchboxes instead of a toy. Later, Amina's mother told me that she was hiding under the bed when the Myanmar military surrounded their household in Rakhine. She watched them kill her father and grandfather, and lay hidden while they gang-raped her mother. She hadn't said a word to anyone outside of her family since then.
Amina's mother also spoke of how lost she felt now that her parents and husband were dead. She lamented, "What will happen to my child?" During visits to the refugee camps, I have heard this refrain over and over again from Rohingya parents—"what will happen to my child?"