Bangladesh - Rohingyas, the Forgotten People

Bangladesh - Rohingyas, the Forgotten People Broadcast: 27/03/2007 Reporter: Peter Lloyd In a world of displaced people struggling for survival, the plight of the Rohingyas in Bangladesh, is little known.Forced out of Burma by the brutal military regime, the Rohingyas have been given little support by successive Bangladeshi governments, who've classified them as illegal immigrants – and who have prevented journalists from entering the remote border region where the refugees are corralled. However, South Asia correspondent Peter Lloyd found a way around bureaucratic obstacles to enter the camps and reveal the atrocious conditions in which the Rohingyas live. At the Naya Para camp he found Shahab Meah who escaped to Bangladesh 17 years ago. “I came here because of oppression. The Burmese government was dictatorial. They closed our madrassas (religious schools) and mosques and seized our land. We couldn’t take the brutality any more.“Unfortunately Shahab Meah and his family have found harsh conditions in Bangladesh as well. He tells Lloyd that if the military and plain clothes security guards in the camp discover that he’s been complaining about conditions, “they’ll put me in jail".Shahab’s 22 year old son is a volunteer teacher at a make-shift school but he says students are only allowed to be educated at primary level and there’s an acute shortage of teachers and books. While food and housing are in short supply in the official refugee camps, largely funded by the United Nations, Peter Lloyd finds that conditions are even worse in squatter camps on the Naf River. There people are subsisting on a diet of weeds and yams from the forest. Medecins San Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders) has set up an emergency feeding centre to tackle malnutrition. Kenyan doctor Moses Analo says that the child death toll has been cut dramatically. Whereas the death toll was thirty a month or more now fewer than seven children die per month. Video link: http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2007/bangladesh_rohingyas_200k.asx