The threat within the world's largest refugee camp
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 1 May 2023
⏱️ 42 minutes
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Summary
Join “Post Reports” on a journey through the Kutupalong mega camp in Bangladesh. It’s home to about a million Rohingya refugees who fled persecution in Myanmar only to face growing militant threats from within the camp.
The Kutupalong encampment has become increasingly difficult for visitors to access. Armed guards man the entrance. Documentation to enter is hard to come by. But earlier this year, Rebecca Tan, The Post’s Southeast Asia bureau chief, spent two weeks inside. She discovered deteriorating conditions, frightened refugees with nowhere else to go and a desperation fueling the growth of violent Rohingya groups inside the camps.
In today’s episode, Rebecca takes us into the lives of a Rohingya community that much of the world keeps forgetting. And she uncovers the story of one man, Mohammad Ismail, who, despite the dangers of coming forward, has been fighting for his family and for his people’s survival.
Read more:
The Rohingya fled genocide. Now, violence stalks them as refugees.
Aid dwindles for Rohingya refugees as money goes to Ukraine and other crises.
Rohingya refugees are braving perilous seas to escape camp desperation.
Fire rips through Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, displacing 12,000.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just a heads up. |
| 0:03.8 | Today's show contains some graphic descriptions of violence. |
| 0:07.6 | So please be mindful of that when you're choosing where and with whom you listen. |
| 0:18.4 | So when you enter the mega camps, there's a lot of barbed wire. |
| 0:24.0 | The entrances are very tightly controlled now. |
| 0:26.3 | You'll see men in camel uniform with guns and rifles. |
| 0:31.9 | And if you are in an unmarked car or a car that doesn't clearly say UNICEF or save the |
| 0:38.2 | children, they'll stop you and ask you for your camp pass or for your documentation that |
| 0:43.0 | says you're allowed to be in the camps itself. |
| 0:49.9 | Rebecca Tan is the Southeast Asia Bureau Chief for the Washington Post. |
| 0:54.2 | She spent two weeks this year inside a refugee camp in Bangladesh, one that's virtually |
| 0:59.8 | closed off from the outside world and literally closed off to visitors at night. |
| 1:04.9 | The camp is located on the southeastern coast in a district called Cox's Bazaar. |
| 1:11.4 | So the Kutupalong mega camp is the single largest refugee encampment in the world. |
| 1:18.0 | It's home now to about a million refugees, half of whom are children. |
| 1:28.4 | Cox's Bazaar is located on a pretty hilly area. |
| 1:31.7 | So if you can imagine these shelters stacked, you know, closely to one another, they're |
| 1:35.9 | very small and families as large as eight or ten live in each one. |
| 1:41.3 | And so everything that happens in these communities, everything that happens in each block is |
| 1:47.2 | known very quickly by the entire community. |
| 1:53.7 | And when you're physically in one of these shelters, you realize that it's never quiet. |
| 2:08.3 | And the daytime at all hours, you will hear babies crying, roost is growing. |
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