Category: Rohingya Reports

Cox’s Bazar Update: Eleven Cases of COVID So Far, No Deaths

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Mayyu Ali is a young Rohingya poet, writer, and humanitarian activist who runs the Youth Empowerment Centre in the refugee camp at Cox’s Bazaar. https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2019/spring/rohingya-refugee-mayyu-ali

As I said in my post a week ago, I have been following the international news for two months now warning of the impending disaster that would soon befall some of the big refugee camps around the world as the Chinese Virus continues to spread.

I said I would report on a regular basis on the topic.

So far, the “carnage” has not arrived as we learn from an Op-Ed written by a young Rohingya political activist whose opinion piece was posted at the Washington Post on Thursday.

One of his complaints is that the country of Bangladesh, where the largest Rohingya Muslim communities are located at Cox’s Bazar, is that internet access is not available in the camp and was shut off last September.

However, if you are interested you can search activist/author Ali and see that he has access to the media at facebook/twitter and including here at the Washington Post on Thursday:

The world’s largest refugee settlement is in the crosshairs of a cyclone and a pandemic

On March 24, Bangladesh confirmed the first covid-19 case in the city of Cox’s Bazar. Since then, the government imposed a lockdown in the area, including for the camps where more than 1 million Rohingya refugees — myself included — are surviving. On May 14, Bangladesh reported the first two confirmed cases within the camps itself — a Rohingya refugee and a local Bangladeshi person.

The nightmare of what we and the world have feared for months had finally arrived at our doorsteps — and it couldn’t have come at a worse time.

The very next day, humanitarian groups used loudspeakers to warn us about Cyclone Amphan, a super-cyclone that was the strongest storm on record in the Bay of Bengal. The groups raised two red flags together in camps, one to signal the detection of the coronavirus in refugee camps and the other to signal the cyclone.

Wednesday night marked the Night of Decree for Muslims, the night when the Koran was first sent down from heaven to the world. Rohingya refugees in camps were waiting for the night to seek safeguard from Allah. While thousands were preparing for prayers, heavy rain and wind started to strike.

Cyclone petered out….

Cyclone Amphan may soon dwindle in Cox’s Bazar, but the monsoon season is just about to arrive. No monsoon leaves the Rohingya refugee camps without devastation. Every year, there are accounts of landslides, shelters destroyed and flooding in camps.

However, our greatest fear is still the spread of the novel coronavirus in the overcrowded camps. Every day brings new confirmed cases in Cox’s Bazar. By Wednesday, there were reportedly 11 confirmed cases in Rohingya refugee camps.

The patients are kept in the isolation facilities that have been newly constructed by United Nations agencies in refugee camps. Refugees who were in contact with those patients were placed in quarantine in Cox’s Bazar, a densely populated area where social distancing is a fantasy. [As I have said previously, we will now have the ultimate test of whether social distancing is significant or not in slowing the spread.—ed]

[….]

Every morning, we hear about new cases in refugee camps and fall deeper into fear.  [But, only 11 so far, right? No deaths?—ed]

Those who fall ill with fever and coughing are afraid to go to the international NGO-run clinic in camps. There are rumors that those who are found with this virus are shot to death. Many refugees are afraid of getting tested for the virus.

Read it all.

I sure hope Mr. Ali and other political activists are out trying to dispel that ignorant rumor, or there could be a Chinese virus crisis at Cox’s Bazar. Sometimes I think the mainstream media is secretly wishing for that outcome.

See over 200 additional posts on Rohingya in my Rohingya Reports category.

 

Will the Chinese Virus Bring “Carnage” to Cox’s Bazar?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

“Now that the virus has entered the world’s largest refugee settlement in Cox’s Bazar we are looking at the very real prospect that thousands of people may die from COVID-19.”

(Dr. Shamim Jahan)

 

Two days ago I told you that the first cases of COVID-19 have been diagnosed at a refugee camp in Bangladesh housing tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims.

The mainstream media has been predicting “catastrophic” carnage for weeks.

I’m going to report on the effect on the camp in the days and weeks ahead because I think it will be illustrative on the issue of social distancing.

I’m not wishing for a certain outcome, nor am I predicting what will happen.  I will just report.

When it comes to anything to do with the Rohingya, the mainstream media’s myopic view is not to be trusted. Combined with its coverage of COVID, finding facts will be a challenge.

In breathless tones I see that NPR, the Hill, Deutsche Welle, the BBC and Reuters are all jumping on the news they have been waiting for over the last two months.

Here is NPR with its dramatic headline:

COVID-19 Has Arrived In Rohingya Refugee Camps And Aid Workers Fear The Worst

 

It’s the moment international aid groups have been dreading for months — the coronavirus has reached the sprawling refugee camps in the Cox’s Bazar district of southern Bangladesh, home to roughly a million Rohingya refugees.

Save the Children’s health director in Bangladesh, Dr. Shamim Jahan.

Bangladesh officials said on Thursday that at least two people living in or adjacent to the camps have tested positive for the coronavirus and have now been quarantined amid fears of a humanitarian disaster if the virus spreads unchecked.

“I’m deeply concerned, but, sadly, not surprised at all,” Deepmala Mahla, CARE’s regional director for Asia, told NPR.

“I am scared, I am worried, but I also feel that this is a stark reminder how vulnerable the Rohingya refugees are,” she said.

Save the Children’s health director in Bangladesh, Dr. Shamim Jahan, is worried, too. In a statement, he warned of the “catastrophic” effect of the virus on the Rohingya, and on Bangladesh in general.

“Now that the virus has entered the world’s largest refugee settlement in Cox’s Bazar we are looking at the very real prospect that thousands of people may die from COVID-19,” he said.

Continue reading here.

See my Rohingya Reports category with over 200 posts extending back a dozen years.  The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic group that is permitted to be resettled in the US (there is no Muslim ban!).

After Two Months of Dire Warnings, a Couple of COVID Cases Appear in Refugee Camps

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’m posting this news because I have been following (for weeks!) the media’s hyper focus on the Chinese Virus and its potential threat to large refugee camps worldwide.  Now it appears the first cases have arrived.

The value of social distancing (or lack of it) is about to be tested.

Over two weeks ago I told you that the carnage watch was on, see here.

In case you don’t think the Rohingya have anything to do with you, think again.

You need to know that Rohingya Muslims (there is no Muslim ban!) are being resettled in the US in large numbers (prior to the COVID shutdown) during the Trump Administration.

Here is one story about Rohingya refugees staging a political protest in Arizona a couple of years ago with a little information for you on the Rohingya back story.

See over 200 additional posts on Rohingya in my Rohingya Reports category.

Their situation is much more complicated than the superficial media-created meme that depicts them as pure as the driven snow while Burmese Buddhists are their persecutors.

From the BBC:

Coronavirus: Two Rohingya test positive in refugee camp

Rohingya camp at Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh

 

Two Rohingya refugees have tested positive for coronavirus in the world’s largest refugee camp in Bangladesh, officials say.

These are the first confirmed cases among refugees in Cox’s Bazar, where around one million Rohingya are encamped, a government doctor said.

Officials told the BBC that those infected were now being treated in isolation.

About 1,900 other refugees are now being isolated for tests.

The Rohingya in the crowded camps of Cox’s Bazar have been living under lockdown since 14 March.

In Greece, which is also home to large numbers of refugees, officials are hoping to relocate around 1,600 vulnerable persons from its camps to other countries as the pandemic eases.

Two migrants who reached Greece’s Lesbos island this week tested positive for Covid-19 and were isolated with no contact with refugee camps on the island.

More here.

Go here to read about the big Greek camps.  A couple of newly arrived African migrants have tested positive for the Chinese virus, but notice that the big island camps are still largely not impacted.

Still Waiting for the COVID ‘Crisis’ to Reach Refugee Camps

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 3 Comments

On and off over the last few weeks I’ve been following media warnings that all hell is going to break lose in refugee camps worldwide where tens of thousands of refugees are packed together in filthy conditions (so we are told), and yet still no serious outbreak of the Chinese virus.

What gives?

Maybe it is too soon, maybe the crisis is yet to come, but if it doesn’t what does that tell us about the whole concept of social distancing as we stay behind our closed doors with the monster menacing on our doorstep.

I checked again this morning and the latest dire warning comes from PBS Frontline about the large Rohingya camp at Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.

A week earlier the UN said it would be “devastating” if the virus arrived in the camp. Two weeks ago we reported on the anticipated “carnage” to come.

But before we get to that, it’s time for a trip down memory lane!

I first wrote about Cox’s Bazar over ten years ago when even Time magazine was reporting that it was an Islamic terrorist hidey-hole.

This is what Time said (link is now dead, so it’s a good thing I snipped it!) about Cox’s Bazar:

Today, southern Bangladesh has become a haven for hundreds of jihadis on the lam. They find natural allies in Muslim guerrillas from India hiding out across the border, and in Muslim Rohingyas, tens of thousands of whom fled the ethnic and religious suppression of the Burmese military junta in the late 1970s and 1980s. Many Rohingyas are long-term refugees, but some are trained to cause trouble back home in camps tolerated by a succession of Bangladeshi governments. The original facilities date back to 1975, making them Asia’s oldest jihadi training camps. And one former Burmese guerrilla who visits the camps regularly describes three near Ukhia, south of the town of Cox’s Bazar, as able to accommodate a force of 2,500 between them.

That was all before the Rohingya became the media-created poster children for Muslim oppression by the Buddhists of Burma.***

From PBS yesterday:

Facing COVID-19 in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp, Young Rohingya Help Prepare for an Outbreak

Every day, before dawn breaks, a student named Robi wakes up in the world’s largest refugee camp to pray.

Until a few weeks ago, many of those prayers were made at a local mosque, one of the few safe havens for his displaced community of Rohingya Muslims living in Cox’s Bazar, on Bangladesh’s sandy southeast coast. But the mosques and schools are now closed, as the threat of the novel coronavirus creeps closer to this vulnerable, tightly packed group.

The first case was confirmed within the local community last month, and the number of cases is growing.  [That would be March, so where are the cases a month later?—ed]

Athena Rayburn of Save the Children

“We’re very much on borrowed time,” said Athena Rayburn, Save the Children’s humanitarian advocacy manager in Cox’s Bazar.

[….]

In late March, in a bid to stem the spread of the virus, the government restricted camp access to the more than 100 aid agencies working there. Now, only frontline workers deemed critical are being allowed in. They’re providing food and some medical aid, Rayburn said, but the services “are not currently sufficient to treat an outbreak.”

[….]

In Cox’s Bazar, there’s no such thing as social distancing.

Here, people pack together at an average of 100,000 people per square mile — far closer quarters than on a cruise ship. In these cramped quarters, accessing clean water and proper hygiene can be difficult. “People are very worried and upset,” said Mohammad Arfaat, a 25-year-old Rohingya filmmaker who lives in the camp with his family. “People are living together and sharing toilet you know, water pipe, everything, so if anyone is infected in the camp it will be very harmful.”

More here.

We will keep an eye on this story and report when/if the Chinese Virus arrives at Cox’s Bazar.  (Bangladesh at present has over 6,000 cases.)  If it doesn’t arrive in the camps in any significant way what will we learn from that lesson—that social distancing doesn’t matter, or perhaps that the media is whipping up fear (again) to create sympathy for the Rohingya?

We will be watching!

***I have an extensive archive with 231 previous posts I call Rohingya Reports for your reading pleasure (during your COVID incarceration).  You need to know more about this ethnic group since it is one of the few Muslim refugee groups being admitted to the US in recent years. (Besides the Afghan special refugees.)

Covid “Carnage” Has Not Yet Arrived in Refugee Camps

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….but it isn’t for lack of searching for it by the mainstream media.

For weeks I have been scouring news stories daily looking for the widespread arrival of COVID-19 in refugee camps around the world where people are living packed together and soap is a scarce commodity.

Several times I’ve wanted to just post the breathless headlines that scream a human tragedy is on the way.  “Catastrophe” and “carnage” are the words that appear in many of the articles I’ve read.

But, so far (and I emphasize ‘so far’) the places where you would think the virus should have spread like wildfire are pretty much untouched.

However, this morning I found this headline at US News and figured it was time to report on the refugee ‘catastrophe’ about to explode (or maybe not):

Coronavirus Cases Rise in Refugee Camps

AS THE NUMBER OF coronavirus cases in refugee camps starts to rise around the world, experts are sounding the alarm over the vulnerabilities of displaced people during the pandemic.

There is a paragraph here taking a whack at the US and ICE, then this….

Refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh for Rohingya Muslims. Catastrophe-expected story from almost a month ago. https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/doctors-coronavirus-outbreak-among-refugees-would-be

 

Meanwhile, confirmed coronavirus cases are turning up in refugee camps. In Greece, authorities announced on April 2 that a migrant camp had been quarantined after 23 asylum seekers tested positive for the coronavirus – the first such facility in the country to be hit since the outbreak, according to Reuters.

Bangladesh imposed a lockdown on March 24 after the first case of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, was reported in the refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Reuters reported. The camps at Cox’s Bazar house more than 1 million Rohingya.

A combination of population density, a lack of information and access to basic human services make refugees particularly vulnerable to the spread of the coronavirus, according to Refugees International.

In a country where soap and water is in short supply, as of today the whole country of Bangladesh has only 482 cases.

Now see this near the end of the US News report:

Chris Boian, a senior communications officer with the U.N. Refugee Agency, the UNHCR, says that there have been “relatively low numbers of suspected or confirmed cases among refugees” overall.

 

Never letting a good crisis go to waste, here comes the New Yorker yesterday with an interview with ‘moneybags’ Miliband about the International Rescue Committee’s report on the crisis they are sure will unfold in refugee camps worldwide.

 

The Danger of COVID-19 for Refugees

About ten days ago I reminded readers of the huge salaries CEOs of ‘charitable’ organizations receive and used David Miliband as an example. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2020/04/01/will-ceos-of-refugee-agencies-take-pay-cuts-to-help-their-staff-and-their-refugees/

On April 1st, the I.R.C. released a report on how the coronavirus pandemic could affect refugees. Focussing on displaced populations in Syria, Greece, and Bangladesh, the I.R.C. found that refugees will likely face extreme risk when the virus begins to spread. “The rapid spread of covid-19 on the Diamond Princess”—the cruise ship that was quarantined in the port of Yokohama, Japan—“showed how the virus thrives in confined spaces,” Marcus Skinner, a senior policy adviser at I.R.C., wrote, but the conditions of millions of displaced people “are far more cramped and poorly serviced, and the risks are far deadlier.”

I recently spoke by phone with David Miliband, the president and C.E.O. of the I.R.C. He was formerly a Labour Member of Parliament and the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed what can be done to prevent vulnerable populations from contracting the coronavirus, how the I.R.C. is protecting its own staff, and why a pandemic makes international coöperation all the more necessary.

Of course their plan offers no real solutions. They say they are fighting “disinformation” and promoting government health services and are happy to report that private donations haven’t dried up.

They also want governments to keep their borders open, blah, blah, blah.

Dr. Fauci recommends compulsive handwashing. https://foxy99.com/2020/04/08/dr-fauci-recommends-americans-should-never-shake-hands-again-prevent-coronavirus/

There is no way to promote social distancing in refugee camps, but Miliband does offer up a suggestion that more soap is needed because we all need to know this.

Miliband:

Everyone needs to know Anthony Fauci washes his hands fifty times a day and, if possible, know that their local trusted people are doing the same.

Hmmm!! I wonder how much soap Miliband’s $861,209 salary would buy.

It is a long article that you might want to save for future reference.

Only time will tell if the ‘carnage’ arrives in refugee camps like this million-plus Rohingya camp at Cox’s Bazar, but I find it interesting that it has been three weeks since the first case was reported there and there has not been any widespread infection where I expect there is no social distancing and little hand washing happening.