#coxsbazar

Our correspondent @jasonbnpr is reporting on the Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. This week, Bangladesh had planned to start sending Rohingya refugees back to Myanmar. Now the deal has been postponed. 

Here is a picture of the refugee camp where 650,000 refugees are living.

This is Mohamed Yonus. “If the Bangladesh soldiers force us to go we will go,” Yonus says. “But without our rights [in Myanmar] they’ll kill us over there.”

30-year-old Shafika Khatun, says she won’t go back to Myanmar unless the country grants citizenship to the Rohingya. “Without justice we will never go back,” says Khatun. “We need our rights and our citizenship in Myanmar. Now if we go back they’ll kill us.”

In the camp, there are toilets and outhouses, & the @WFP is distributing rations. But the bamboo shelters have been erected on hillsides that are basically just sand, and there are fears that when monsoon season starts the camp will turn into a mud pit.

Still, the refugees who spoke to NPR said they feel safer in Bangladesh than in Myanmar. “We want our land, we want our houses, we want our rights,” says Khatun. 

Read the full story here