Nazrul Islam -
An autorickshaw stopped by the side of a small muddy path leading into a hilly forest in south-eastern Bangladesh.
Two women, one holding a newborn in her arms, sat quietly inside.
The rickshaw driver asked a local man for help since a nearby hospital had refused to admit the woman, who gave birth to a baby boy only a few hours earlier in the jungle.
Rehana Begum, 20, had walked for eight straight days in an advanced stage of pregnancy before crossing into Bangladesh to flee the violence that has engulfed neighbouring Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
Her companion Afsi Khatun took Begum to a nearby bush, once used as a graveyard, when her labour pains intensified. Hours later, she gave birth. She was 10 km inside Bangladesh’s border.
“I could not leave her as she was in agonising pain. I did it bare-handed,” Khatun said.
Rehana Begum, she said, left her village in Rakhine state after the Myanmar military killed her husband Nurul Amin and burned down their home in early September.
Taher Noim, the local Bangladeshi who met the autorickshaw, arranged shelter for Rehana Begum and her newborn at his relative’s home near the hill.
Thousands of other refugees, including women, children, men and the elderly, have no other place to go.
The bare fields, forests and waysides have become sprawling beds for the seemingly endless stream of people crossing into Bangladesh since ethnic violence erupted in western Myanmar last month.
The exodus of Rohingya civilians began on August 25, after the Myanmar army launched a crackdown on insurgents who allegedly attacked security posts in Rakhine.
More than 370,000 people from Myanmar have entered Bangladesh since the attacks.
The Myanmar army says it has killed nearly 400 insurgents in “clearance operations” since then.
But refugees crossing into Bangladesh say the army and local Buddhist villagers killed Muslims and burned their villages one after another to drive them away from Rakhine.
As refugee camps in Bangladesh’s south-eastern district of Cox’s Bazar have already exceeded their capacity, new arrivals must stay — temporarily at least — in the forests, on roadsides or hill slopes.
Nights are difficult for the tens of thousands who still lack tents.
Some of them manage to make bed spreads on the mud with mats made of aquatic plants, tarpaulin or polythene sheets. They sleep with their few possessions close by their side.
Kawsar Ahmed, a local resident of the forest hill, said he had remained awake for the past three nights to guard refugees from any potential problems — especially since many young women and children are among them.
Some who stopped by the wayside were still looking for places to settle down. Others simply lay on the muddy surface with nothing to shelter them. Women covered in saris could be seen breast-feeding infants while surrounded by mosquitoes and other insects.
Sixty-year-old Abdul Malek of Maungdaw said he was awake until dawn worrying about where he would go in the morning.
“There is no assurance of food and shelter. How can I manage my seven-member family,” Malek said, adding his family had not eaten for four straight days while making their way to Bangladesh.
Lokman Hakim, 65, sat next to a bridge on Teknaf-Cox’s Bazar highway after crossing the Naf River, which separates Bangladesh from Myanmar, in the early hours on Monday.
Accompanied by his wife, two daughters and three sons, Hakim said he lost two other sons in the violence. Their home was burned down and their property was looted, he added.
“We need to stay in the open until we can find a shelter,” he said.
— dpa
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