By Sam Jahan
COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh—The phone rang at 4 a.m. It was Kamal, a Rohingya man whom I met last fall during the Rohingya exodus to Bangladesh who was living near Cox’s Bazar, a fishing port not far from the Myanmar border.
“Assalamu Alaykum Kamal bhai, what’s up?” I said in a sleepy voice.
“Sir! They are burning everything… killing us randomly. I’m going to Burma to bring my relatives. Please let the world know about this oppression and pray for us!” he said, panting. He seemed to be running.
He then hung up. I haven’t heard a word from him since.
The phone call left me wide awake. I knew the Myanmar army had been gathering in the Rakhine region for the past few days and that scores of Rohingya were arriving at the border of Bangladesh, despite repeated denials from border and coast guards.
I was supposed to be home for a week of bed rest because of severe back pain. But after Kamal’s phone call, I literally begged my office to let me go to Cox’s Bazar on a reporting mission. I knew enough of the story to realize that something big was brewing. Whenever the Myanmar army conducted operations in the Rahine state, it resulted in scores of Rohingya fleeing and international accusations that the government forces were engaging in ethnic cleansing of the Muslim minority people living in the Buddhist-majority country.
I flew to Cox’s with my notebook, tape recorder, camera, tripod and a bag full of painkillers.
I headed to a border guard outpost in a frontier area called Ghumdhum to meet with a commander. The gentleman was very cooperative. He allowed me to film our interview, during which he said that the situation was calm and quiet. As soon as I turned off the record button, as if on cue, hundreds of rounds of gunshots erupted on the other side of the border, nearly a kilometer away. Mortar shells dropped intermittently into the ditches inside the no-man’s land, sending up splashes of 15-20 meters high. I saw thousands of people, who had been hiding in the hills, running for their lives toward the border.
I’ve never seen anything so astounding before. I was intimidated, excited, angry and above all very curious. This was happening before my own eyes.
The commander ordered his men to be ready for any emergencies and sent dozens of personnel to the border posts and trenches. These men allowed the Rohingya to come closer to the Bangladesh border, though they didn’t allow them to enter the country. “At least we can let them come closer so that they are safe from the mortars’ range,” the commander said.
As I filmed the fleeing refugees in the distance, kicking myself for not having brought a bigger lens, the commander approached me, asking me to reinterview him.
He seemed to be emotional and made a bold statement for a government official. “We can see great numbers of refugees coming down from the hills, mostly women and children. We hear heavy firing from a Burmese post, but we cannot see exactly what is happening. The situation seems very tense and we are on the highest alert.”
By the next day, the world knew of the atrocities that were reported in the Rohingya villages. Having run away, scores of them were now stranded inside Bangladesh. The next morning I rushed to the same spot. The Bangladesh border officers were guarding at least 500 Rohingyas who managed to cross. I was mesmerized. They were all women, children and old men. Sitting under the scorching sun after being drenched by the monsoon …
As with any other humanitarian crisis, there are politics involved. We journalists try to cover what’s happening as best we can. I have returned home now from my mission. But I keep wondering what all of those kids that I wrote about are doing now, whether they’re alive and safe.
Collateral damage is inevitable in any conflict, I understand that. But I just can’t get over all the grief that I saw, especially the children suffering. I managed to take care of my physical pain with medicine, but I wonder what painkillers will heal my mind after what I’ve witnessed these days.