(Image: Rosena Allin-Khan)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nDAY 2: Wednesday<\/h3>\n
Three planes, and a lot of coffee later, I land in Cox\u2019s Bazar. Each leg of the journey saw the planes get smaller and smaller as I neared the border of Myanmar.<\/p>\n
Once a well-known tourist destination, Cox\u2019s Bazar is now known for the sprawling camps located a couple of hours drive away, housing a million refugees who fled genocide at the hands of Myanmar\u2019s military.<\/p>\n
I set about meeting with charities who work on the ground. We spend the evening discussing the dangers for women and children who make up 80 per cent of camp population. Women who were raped a year ago are coming forward, some have given birth to the children of their rapists \u2013 something I cannot fathom. These women face social stigma and need psychosocial support.<\/p>\n
DAY 3: Thursday<\/h3>\n
Up at 5:30am and off to the camps with Christian Aid. The sheer scale has to be seen to be believed \u2013 the camps go on for as far as the eye can see, over hills, and housing more people than Liverpool and Manchester combined. I meet people who have been queueing since dawn for treatment at the MSF clinic. Medics are facing challenges with disease outbreaks.<\/p>\n
Walking through the camps, I am staggered by the number of lone children and the generosity of the families who are helping to support them.<\/p>\n
Christian Aid show me their Community Kitchen, a safe space for women and children to forge community ties. Here, women are keen to tell me their stories \u2013 something they have never had the opportunity to do so before. I meet Humaira, whose young son was murdered when the army stormed her village.<\/p>\n
She tells me how she wanted to kill herself but was kept alive by her desire to locate his body and bury him.<\/p>\n
After two days of searching, and at risk of being caught by the military, she eventually decided to escape. She still lives with the pain of not being able to bury him. Next, I meet Subara, who tells me how military snatched her year-old son from her arms and knifed him to death in front of her. The stories are simply heart-wrenching.<\/p>\n
Sadly, these are not unique accounts. The strength of these women, and those who crawled over the border to safety while seven months pregnant, is inspiring.<\/p>\n
DAY 4: Friday<\/h3>\n
I visit a number of clinics, including the MedGlobal centre where I spent time last year. It really is fantastic to see a new breastfeeding room and play areas. Children regularly show symptoms of malnourishment, while women are developing skin conditions and infections as they are too scared to use the washrooms at night \u2013 and there is no privacy in the day.<\/p>\n
Doctors have been treating women who have given birth to children who were the result of rape. There were stories of women dying from blood loss after attempting a DIY abortion, unable to face the reminder of the trauma they experienced.<\/p>\n
DAY 5: Saturday<\/h3>\n
It has been an exhausting and emotional few days and I\u2019ve spoken to some awe-inspiring women about the issues they face every day in the camps. The spirit is one of resilience, which is remarkable given the horrors they have endured.<\/p>\n
With constant fear of being forcibly returned to Myanmar, or a cyclone levelling the camp to matchsticks, each day is a worry. The resounding message from these people is that they want justice for their loved ones who were killed. Why should their lives be worth any less than yours or mine? I will continue to put pressure on Jeremy Hunt and the Government to seek justice in the international courts for the Rohingya. Infanticide and rape as a weapon of war, indeed genocide, cannot go unpunished.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By\u00a0Rosena Allin-Khan, Mirror Rosena Allin-Khan, Doctor and Labour MP for Tooting worked as a doctor at a MedGlobal clinic Labour MP\u00a0Dr Rosena Allin-Khan travelled to Bangladesh to visit refugee camps on the country’s border with Myanmar. Last year she was there helping as a doctor. Now, in this exclusive diary for the Sunday Mirror, she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_oct_exclude_from_cache":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,203],"tags":[238,368,264,401,249,215],"class_list":["post-21443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article-international-authors","category-refugee-news","tag-bangladesh","tag-healthcare","tag-icc","tag-myanmar-genocide","tag-refugees","tag-rohingya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rohingyapost.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rohingyapost.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rohingyapost.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rohingyapost.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rohingyapost.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rohingyapost.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rohingyapost.com\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rohingyapost.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rohingyapost.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rohingyapost.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}