ROME: The world has largely forgotten the plight of Rohingya refugees, just as a looming monsoon is about to create “a crisis within a crisis,” NGO leader Regina Catrambone warned in an interview. Nearly 700,000 members of the stateless, minority have sought refuge in Bangladesh to escape a violent army crackdown in Myanmar, but are now at risk from extreme weather.
“This will be a crisis within a crisis,” Catrambone said during a recent trip to Rome, saying that Rohingya camps built on deforested hillsides may be soon washed away by heavy rains and flooding.
“We expect 75 per cent of bridges to collapse, people will be isolated,” and “mothers, children and grandparents who are there today may not be there tomorrow,” the 42-year-old said.
Catrambone is co-founder and director of Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS), which runs two emergency clinics for Rohingyas in the Cox’s Bazar district of Bangladesh.
This month, the NGO also launched a naval “observation” mission in the Andaman Sea, amid reports that Rohingya boat migrant flows out of Myanmar are increasing.
“Nobody cares about Bangladesh,” Catrambone said, lamenting that international interest in the Rohingya crisis has waned since Pope Francis visited Myanmar and Bangladesh in late 2017.
“We can’t keep on thinking ‘if it’s not close to me, I don’t care about it.’ I think we should have a more global vision about the migration phenomenon,” she said.
The Italian wife of an American businessman who runs the Tangiers Group, a Malta-based insurance and intelligence conglomerate, Catrambone knows a thing or two about appealing to people’s conscience.
She and her husband Christopher invested their personal wealth to found MOAS in 2014, responding to Pope Francis’ repeated appeals against global indifference towards migrants.
From Malta, MOAS ran the Mediterranean’s first-ever non-governmental migrant rescue service, setting an example later followed by Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children and smaller charities.
“We were the first NGO at sea to shine a European light [on the Mediterranean migration crisis],” she said. “In 2014, it was only us and the Italian navy and coast guard.”
MOAS left abruptly in September, after months of political firestorm in which NGOs faced accusations in Italy of acting in cahoots with Libyan traffickers to bring migrants to Europe.
During those same months, the Italian government managed to curb migrant landings thanks to cooperation deals with Libyan authorities, which have raised major concerns among human rights groups.
With Italian and European Union backing, the Libyan coastguard is now intercepting thousands of boat migrants, and returning them to camps where they risk torture and widespread abuse.
“MOAS does not want to become part of a mechanism where there is no guarantee of safe harbour or welcome for those being assisted and rescued at sea,” the NGO said. — dpa
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