Rohinyga Refugee Camp
On Monday at least 15 people were killed in a fire that traveled through the biggest refugee settlement in the world, the Rohingya Muslim refugee camps of Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district. Hundreds of refugees were also reported missing. About 45,000 people were forced to evacuate their shelters. The fire is still being investigated.
Health clinics, mosques, community centers, an IRC safe space for women, and a camp hospital, built with Turkish support, were also burned down.
Witnesses report that the barbed wire fence around the camp trapped many refugees trying to escape the fire. A government official in Bangladesh denied that fencing was a major issue but insists that it was the quick spread of the fire that prevented their escape.
Fire services were dispatched to the camp to prevent further spread. This is the second fire in a Bangladeshi refugee camp this year. A large fire spread through the Nayapara camp in January. Although the January fire displaced hundreds of people there were no reported deaths.
About 1 million Rohingya refugees live in Cox’s Bazar camps. These camps are overcrowded, and shelters are generally made out of bamboo and plastic. To address this, Bangladesh is trying to move a hundred thousand refugees to a remote island in the Bay of Bengal. This Bhasan Char Island is at high risk for flooding and storms; although, Bangladesh has dismissed these concerns and claims to have already built housing, hospitals, and flood and storm defenses.
International humanitarian organizations have provided aid workers in the aftermath and have called for the wire fence to be taken down. In the following days, aid workers have been dispatched to help reunite families separated during the fire and set up new tents for displaced refugees.
The Rohingya were forced to flee from their home in western Myanmar in 2017 after army crackdowns against the minority-Muslim population. Myanmar is a majority-Buddhist country. Most refugees have been refused citizenship in Myanmar and fear persecution upon return home.
AK Wilson – is a freelance journalist based out of the United States.
