Rohingya’s Quiet Genocide | The Arrival In Bangladesh’s Rice Fields

Documentary Photographer and Journalist Erberto Zani is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this documentary photography. From his book ‘EXODUS – Rohingya in Bangladesh‘. To see Erberto’s body of work click on any image.

With only a few concrete international actions to stop the violence, the Rohingya’s exodus goes on, under the indifference of the rest of the world and the heavy silence of Nobel Prize for Peace Winner, Aung San Suu Kyi.

"The darker skin of Rohingya, compared to most of the Burmese population has provide scope for racist attitudes and discrimination."

Rohingya are a Muslim minority living in north Rakhine region, a small state of Myanmar which lies along the border with Bangladesh. The darker skin of Rohingya, compared to most of the Burmese population has provided scope for racist attitudes and discrimination. Also the religion is used by the military of Myanmar to justify their aims. Religion and ethnicity are only part of what explains this forced displacement, larger than other earlier expulsions of Rohingya (in 1978 and 1991).

"...and exposed them also to forced labor and routine violence, such as rape and killings."

Rohingya were denied citizenship of Myanmar by a law enacted by its military government, so reducing their status to that of a stateless group. They were denied the right to own land or property. The Rohingya are also subject to forced labor and routine violence, such as rape and killings.

Myanmar’s military have been grabbing vast stretches of land from small holders without compensation. With a new partnership, the goal is to completely control the entire country’s land to create new economies in mining, timber and geothermal energy. There is indeed a project with China, in Rakhine state, to develop a port and a large industrial zone. Not in the area where the current burning of villages happened, but of course these developments will have an impact on the region.

The area where Rohingya refugees from Myanmar cross the border to enter in Bangladesh is the Cox’s Bazar district, one of the poorest and underdeveloped of the country.

Since October 2016, more than 600,000 refugees arrived in Bangladesh. Last year, on the 17th of October 15,000 Rohingya crossed the border arriving at the rice fields of Palangkhali .

Exhausted, after ten days escaping between jungles and mountains with hot sun or cold rainstorm, they waited their turn in the mud, under control of Bangladesh’s Army, to receive food and medicine on small tongues of sand in the rice fields. After a few days they went to stay inside the huge refugee camps of Thangkhali and Balokhali”.