In cramped and unhygienic camps thousands of refugees face disease, hunger and uncertainty about the future.<\/h2>\n
Balukhali, Bangladesh –<\/strong> Hafiz Shafiq’s infant son has been crying all night. He has been suffering from diarrhoea for the past two weeks, and now he has developed a fever and is vomiting.<\/p>\n The seven-month-old’s condition is deteriorating and with no medical facilities in the camp for Rohingya<\/a> refugees where his family lives in Bangladesh’s<\/a> Balukhali township – about 45km southeast of Cox’s Bazar – there is nobody to help.<\/p>\n Doctors Without Borders (MSF) runs a free clinic nearly 7km away in Kutupalong, but most of the refugees at Balukhali, including Shafiq, prefer to consult unqualified locals who act as doctors.<\/p>\n A tense Shafiq, who does not know his age but thinks he is between 22 and 25, pleads for money to take his son to one.<\/p>\n IN PICTURES: Chased from Myanmar, unwelcome in Bangladesh<\/a><\/p>\n “I never thought I’d be in a position to ask a stranger for money,” Shafiq says.<\/p>\n He opts to consult Khorshad Alam, who works as a private doctor in a room at the back of a chemist shop off a narrow alleyway in Kutupalong Bazar – a market mainly frequented by the Rohingya community. The one-room clinic has two beds, both of which are occupied by women receiving intravenous drips.<\/p>\n The doctor’s lips and gums are stained red from chewing betel nut. His prescription states that he has received Local Medical Assistant and Family Planning (LMAF) training. But according to Bangladeshi law, LMAF medics are not considered qualified to prescribe medication. Still,\u00a0Khorshad prescribes four types of medication for baby Shahid and administers two injections.<\/p>\n Seven months ago, when Shahid was born, Shafiq was living comfortably with his parents, and running his own shop in his home village of Bodibazar, in Rakhine state,\u00a0across the border in Myanmar<\/a>.<\/p>\n Although the Rohingya have lived in Myanmar for centuries, they were stripped of their citizenship in 1982 effectively rendering them stateless. Their movement is tightly restricted by the authorities.<\/p>\n More than 90,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar since October when the military launched a crackdown against what it called Rohingya insurgents after an attack on an army post.<\/p>\n Since then hundreds of Rohingya civilians have been killed. The United Nations has accused Myanmar’s military of committing crimes against humanity.<\/p>\n “They burned homes, and went around raping women in our village,” says Shafiq. “They torched my shop.”<\/p>\n “They hate any marks of Islam – my beard, my cap, my dress,” he adds.<\/p>\n Fearing for his life, Shafiq crossed the Naf River with his wife and son in November, leaving his parents and business behind.<\/p>\n Thousands of other refugees have also found their way to makeshift camps along the border areas, in places such as Kutupalong, Nayapara and Leda in Cox’s Bazar, a major city in southern Bangladesh.<\/p>\n As refugees continue to pour in, many have been directed to the Balukhali camp, which has been set up on salt fields and offers little protection from harsh weather conditions and wild animals.<\/p>\n This is not Shafiq’s first time in Bangladesh. From the age of six, he attended an Islamic madrasa in Cox’s Bazar. He only left three years ago. Educational institutions in Myanmar are segregated and, since the outbreak of violence against Rohingya in 2012, members of the community have not been able to attend university.<\/p>\n It would take him an hour and a half to reach his school in Bangladesh from his village in Myanmar, Shafiq explains. “My village is five minutes from a point where we can cross the border – it was usual for people to cross back and forth,” he says.<\/p>\n REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK: Rohingya camps in Bangladesh and Thailand, worlds apart<\/a><\/p>\n But when Shafiq crossed this time, it was to live in a hut in the Balukhali camp built by his uncle, who left Myanmar years ago. Many other refugees are not as fortunate – too poor to build a hut, they live under tarpaulin in the woods.<\/p>\n Rohingya refugees have been living in Bangladesh since the 1970s. Estimates of the total number vary from 300,000 to 500,000. Most of the refugee camps are located off the Teknaf-Cox’s Bazar highway that runs along the Naf River that separates Bangladesh and Myanmar.<\/p>\n Balukhali camp has ballooned to accommodate many of the recent arrivals, while many older refugees have moved out of the camps to live as undocumented immigrants within Bangladeshi communities.<\/p>\n Every fortnight, the World Food Programme (WFP) gives 25kg of rice and fortified food to the most vulnerable Rohingya families in the camps.<\/p>\n It also runs a supplementary programme for young children and pregnant and lactating women, while the MSF regularly conducts immunisation campaigns among the children.<\/p>\n But the WFP only recently began distributing food at Balukhali. They say they will now do so every 15 days.<\/p>\n In February, an aid ship from Malaysia delivered supplies,<\/a>\u00a0some of which reached the Balukhali camp.<\/p>\n The refugees say they have been receiving food rations through unofficial channels.<\/p>\n “We get about 5kg of rice every few days,” explains Shafiq, adding that he doesn’t know where it comes from.<\/p>\n The Bangladeshi government has strongly discouraged the distribution of aid to Rohingya refugees and\u00a0banned three NGOs<\/a> from doing so, saying that it will encourage more to cross the border.<\/p>\n When approached by Al Jazeera, both the interior and the foreign ministries declined to comment on this.<\/p>\n “Any truck containing aid is turned back at the Morichya checkpoint [a checkpoint along the highway where the refugee camps are located], unless they have express approval from the government,” says social welfare activist Abul Kashem, who regularly organises shipments of aid to the camps.<\/p>\n “We have to tell the authorities that the material is for locals. That is the only way they allow the trucks to pass.”<\/p>\n A WFP official told us on the condition of anonymity that it took much effort on the organisation’s part to obtain the government’s approval to distribute aid to Rohingya.<\/p>\n But as the refugee numbers swelled, more official aid did start to trickle into the camps.<\/p>\n READ MORE: Who are the Rohingya?<\/a><\/p>\n “The International Organization for Migration distributed blankets, soap, torches, water pitchers and other basic supplies to each family,” explains Shafiq, who recalls how “the mood at the camp was very happy” when that happened.<\/p>\n When I first visited Balukhali camp, which has been built on a recently deforested hill, in the first week of February, there were just over 800 huts. Two weeks later, it had grown to more than 1,700. Locals from a nearby village were selling building materials at the camp’s entrance.<\/p>\n The huts are made of plastic sheets stretched over bamboo frames. The sand-battered sheets are covered with tree branches and dry leaves to shield them from the sun.<\/p>\n Each rectangular hut is about 2.5 metres wide and 3.6 metres long. You must stoop to enter but may just be able to stand upright at the point where the roof is highest.<\/p>\n At night, the residents fear that wild animals will enter the camp from the adjacent forest. “We moved our house a few days ago because we were scared of the elephants,” Shafiq says.<\/p>\n Until recently, there were no toilets in the camps and men could be seen urinating in the sand. Others would go into the forest for more privacy.<\/p>\n “I can’t even begin to tell you how hard it is to adapt to not having toilets,” Shafiq says.<\/p>\n Toilets have recently been installed, although the refugees say they don’t know who provided them. Some credit residents of nearby villages, others say it was religious organisations.<\/p>\n But even since their installation, the smell of faeces has intensified as more people arrive at the camp daily.<\/p>\n Activist Kashem, who occasionally volunteers for NGOs, believes that there is a risk of a cholera outbreak. Four Rohingya residents, including two children, at Balukhali camp have died of diarrhoea in recent weeks.<\/p>\n About a month ago, the NGO SHED distributed water filters to every hut in an effort to contain the outbreak of disease. Before that, the refugees drank water directly from the tube wells installed for them by local residents.<\/p>\n Kashem is concerned that the rains, which are still several weeks away, will worsen the already poor hygiene conditions.<\/p>\n Almost all of the refugees have friends and relatives who fled before them. Like Shafiq, many fall back on these networks for survival. This is especially true in Balukhali, where most have no means of making a living.<\/p>\n “[The] day before yesterday we had only rice with salt [for lunch], because there was nothing else. Today is a good day, there is tilapia fish and vegetables,” says Shafiq.<\/p>\n But other refugees are facing even greater hardships. Mohammed Hashem, 38, and Noyon Shona, 30, for example, have to take care of their five children as well as four of their nephews, who were orphaned in the latest round of violence in Myanmar.<\/p>\nHundreds of Rohingya killed<\/h2>\n
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<\/a>Underground aid<\/h2>\n
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<\/a>Life at Balukhali<\/h2>\n
Risk of disease<\/h2>\n
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