Millions without a place to call their own
DHAKA, Bangladesh
(International Herald Tribune), April 1, 2007:
In recent decades, more than 100,000 Muslim Rohingya have fled Myanmar, where they have been stripped of citizenship, denied civil rights and subjected to harassment, forced labor and religious persecution, and settled in Bangladesh, where they live in camps or on the streets. They include this man, blind in one eye after having been beaten during forced labor.Photo Greg Constantine.
Overcrowding plagues every Bihari camp throughout Bangladesh. Conditions are cramped and pose safety and health problems as entire families, some including as many as 15 people, live in 8-by-10-foot rooms, roughly 7 square meters. At the Kurmi Tola Camp in Dhaka, members of a Bihari family of seven sit and work in their room, whose walls are decorated with old newspapers.
In Bangladesh, the Rohingya are not permitted to work legally. Unemployment is high and many men work petty jobs, like the two Rohingya men who paddle a homemade wooden boat that takes people back and forth across the Naaf. They each make around $1 USD a day.
The Rohingyas are only one of the people who can be described as "citizens of nowhere".
By Seth Mydans
Copyright © 2007 the International Herald Tribune
February 4, 2007
BANGLADESH: Citizens Of Nowhere
Millions without a place to call their own
DHAKA, Bangladesh
(International Herald Tribune), April 1, 2007:
In recent decades, more than 100,000 Muslim Rohingya have fled Myanmar, where they have been stripped of citizenship, denied civil rights and subjected to harassment, forced labor and religious persecution, and settled in Bangladesh, where they live in camps or on the streets. They include this man, blind in one eye after having been beaten during forced labor.Photo Greg Constantine.
Overcrowding plagues every Bihari camp throughout Bangladesh. Conditions are cramped and pose safety and health problems as entire families, some including as many as 15 people, live in 8-by-10-foot rooms, roughly 7 square meters. At the Kurmi Tola Camp in Dhaka, members of a Bihari family of seven sit and work in their room, whose walls are decorated with old newspapers.
In Bangladesh, the Rohingya are not permitted to work legally. Unemployment is high and many men work petty jobs, like the two Rohingya men who paddle a homemade wooden boat that takes people back and forth across the Naaf. They each make around $1 USD a day.
The Rohingyas are only one of the people who can be described as "citizens of nowhere".
By Seth Mydans
Copyright © 2007 the International Herald Tribune
