Now, we are told, the reason so few cases have been reported at the world’s supposedly largest refugee camp in Bangladesh is that the residents fear they will be isolated if found to be infected and are therefore refusing testing.
I know this is likely boring for most of you, but since I started following the warnings of “catastrophe” and “carnage” as the Chinese Virus spread “like wildfire” to camps where “vulnerable” migrants live in close proximity to each other, I’m compelled to give you updates.
Literally for months there have been dire predictions of the impending crisis, that has not yet materialized.
Only one death of an old man so far as I said hereon Wednesday.
Fear stops Rohingya getting tested as virus hits refugee camps
BANGKOK/DHAKA (Reuters) – Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh with symptoms of the novel coronavirus are not coming forward to get tested because they fear being separated from their families and held in isolation, community leaders and aid workers say.
Only one death from the coronavirus has been recorded in the crowded camps in southeast Bangladesh, where some 730,000 Muslim Rohingya fled in 2017 to escape a military crackdown in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.
Yale Economics Professor Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak visited the camp and told Reuters he is sure the disease prevalence is much higher than testing so far indicates. https://faculty.som.yale.edu/mushfiqmobarak/
But aid workers fear the coronavirus may be spreading faster through the world’s largest refugee settlement than the 29 cases confirmed since mid-May would indicate.Only 339 tests have been carried out in the camps, officials said, partly because people were simply not going to health facilities to get checked.
“Camp hospitals are emptyand illegal doctors’ shops are full,” said 23-year-old refugee Mujef Khan, a community organiser, referring to pharmacies in the camps run by refugees where people buy pills to treat themselves.
“Many people are getting sick day by day – in every shelter,” he said.
Three Rohingya leaders interviewed by Reuters said coronavirus symptoms were prevalent in the camps that sprawl out over hills near the border with Myanmar.
The camps are more densely populated than the most crowded cities and sanitation is poor and social distancing impossible. [This will be the ultimate test in my opinion of whether social distancing matters or not!—ed]
While new testing facilities and treatment centres are being built, a surge in cases couldoverwhelm the camps, aid workers said.
I guess if they aren’t bothering to be tested, they aren’t that sick. However, they won’t be able to hide the deaths and so we will then get a better indication if the “tinderbox” has exploded as the media has been predicting literally for months!
I have been writing about the Rohingya for nearly 13 years. You need to know they are being resettled in the United States right now. See my Rohingya Reports categoryto learn more about this Muslim ethnic group.
As I said a couple of days ago, I know you have more important things on your mind, but I did say I would follow closely the long-predicted “carnage” coming to refugee camps where thousands upon thousands of people are packed cheek by jowl in camps like the one at Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.
The breathless news was reported by several outlets within the last 24 hours. One gets the feeling that the international media can’t wait to report on “catastrophe” befalling the “vulnerable.” (But, if they could only find a way to blame Donald Trump!)
RPT-UPDATE 2-First Rohingya refugee dies from coronavirus in Bangladesh camps
DHAKA, June 2 (Reuters) – An elderly Rohingya refugee has become the first person to die from coronavirus in the world’s largest refugee settlement in Bangladesh, where there are fears the disease could spread fast due to overcrowding.
The 71-year-old man died on May 31 while undergoing treatment at an isolation centre at the camps where over a million Rohingya live, said Bimal Chakma, a senior official of the government’s Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commission.
“Today we got the confirmation that he tested positive for COVID-19,” he told Reuters by telephone.
Note that he died from something prior to being tested for the Chinese virus.
Reuters goes on to report that there are now 29 cases in the camp that houses a million Rohingya Muslims.
I am watching because this is the ultimate test of the importance (or lack of it) of social distancing.
I had been wondering if Minneapolis’s large population of African refugees had joined the throngs of rioters and looters. It seems they have.
It is more proof that the citizens of Minnesota’s St. Louis Countywho just last week protested against refugees for their towns and cities are right—diversity destroys the social fabric of communities.
Feel the rage! From the refugees? Or, from American taxpayers who for decades have been paying billions of their hard-earned dollars to bring, dare I say it, a bunch of ingrates who now say we are racists and they fear for their sons?
I suspect you have one answer for them!
From Channel News Asia (yes, an international news site painting white America as the root of all evil):
In Minneapolis, African refugees see American dream in tatters
(Their dream in tatters? What about our dreams for the country we love?)
MINNEAPOLIS: African refugees living in Minneapolis were already struggling with their “American dream” when George Floyd died in police custody.
Now their dream is in tatters and they have joined their African American “brothers” in the streets to protest racism in their adopted homeland. [Cut the B.S. with the mushy “adopted homeland” lingo. They didn’t come here because they love America!—ed]
[….]
The state of Minnesota, where Minneapolis is located, has the highest percentage of refugees per inhabitant in the whole country, with two percent of the US population but 13 per cent of its refugees, according to the most recent census.
Among them are a large number of people from the Horn of Africa – Ethiopians and Somalis – whose presence in the marches was noticeable because of the colourful robes worn by the women.
[….]
Deka Jama, a 24-year-old woman who came to the United States from Somalia in 2007, showed up with friends, all of them veiled, to protest the discrimination that met them in their new homeland.
“We thought that everyone would be equal, that we would not be judged by religion, by colour, by our dresses. That’s not how we were welcomed,” she told AFP.
She feels a close affinity to African Americans, many of them descended from slaves and who have been Americans for generations.
There is “something connects us,” she said. “We are all dehumanised, regardless of our cultural differences. We have to be here for them.”
Minnesota’s Somali community has a source of pride, though, in Ilhan Omar, a 37-year-old born in Mogadishu who was elected to Congress in 2018.
[….]
“So many people know a social and economic neglect,” Omar said on Sunday.
According to Minnesota Compass, a website that tracks the state’s demographics, families from Africa are particularly hard hit.
In 2016, Obama was President, he sure didn’t do much for African poverty in America (or was that part of the plan?)!
In 2016, 12 per cent of the population of Minnesota was living under the poverty line, but that number rose to 31 per cent among the Ethiopian community and 55 per cent among Somalis.
Immigrant-owned businesses destroyed too! And, yet, it is all about racist white America. Have they no eyes to see or brains to think?
That has meant that for many refugees, an important facet of the American dream — social mobility – has broken down over time.
And the riots that have followed some protests have not helped their plight, since some of the looted businesses were immigrant-owned.
Here is an idea! If so many live in poverty, then we need to stop importing them. Clearly there isn’t enough work! Clearly they are ungrateful.
Frankly more angry demanding refugees, like these Minnesota Africans, will be the death knell of America.
By the way…..
Where were all these angry Somalis (and their African-American “brothers”) marching in the streets demanding justice forJustine Damondwhen one of their people, a Somali police officer, killed an unarmed white woman in ‘Little Mogadishu’ in the summer of 2017?
That police killing didn’t send white mobs into the streets to demand justice by committing violence, and to rob and steal. Civilized people respect our legal system—the legal system that is the bulwark of a successful and prosperous country.
I know there is a lot occupying your minds in these challenging times, but just thought some of you might like to know where the UN/US Refugee Admissions Programis these days.
In mid-March the UN stopped, or so they said, refugee travel worldwide due to the Chinese virus crisis, but obviously our US State Department is still admitting refugees although way below the normal numbers.
This morning I checked the data base at the Refugee Processing Centerand was surprised to see that since the moratorium was announced in the middle of March we admitted 382 refugees.
134 of those came between May first and today, June first. 79 of the 134 are Muslims (THERE IS NO MUSLIM BAN).
There has been no official word that the travel restrictions have been lifted, or none I have seen I should say.
The top sending countries for May were Burma (22), Iran (18), Pakistan (16), Sudan (14) and Syria (14). 21 of the Burmese are Rohingya Muslims.
Of the 18 Iranians, only 2 are Muslim. Of the 16 Pakistanis, 11 are Muslims and all of the Sudanese and Syrians are Muslims. 6 Somali Muslims were ‘welcomed’ too.
Here (below) is a map where the 382 refugees, who have been admitted since we supposedly weren’t admitting refugees, were placed.
I’ve never seen Idaho in the top ten ‘welcoming’ states, but at the moment it is 5th.
I know the print is small so here are the top ten states which are adding refugees to their already COVID-stressed communities.
Texas (is always number one!)
Massachusetts
Illinois
North Carolina
Idaho
Maryland
New York
Georgia
Tennessee
Utah
As for the Special Immigrant Visas from Afghanistan, I see that we admitted only 40 in the months of April and May when the number for March was 1,594. After admitting 67,731 since 2007, is it possible we now have ‘rescued’ them all?
COVID in the camps?
One more thing, if you have been waiting with bated breath to hear whether the COVID “wildfire” has arrived in the big refugee camps worldwide, I can report this morning that no, the media is still waiting in anticipation of the “catastrophe” that has not materialized so far.
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 Poston 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 includinghere 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.
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 myRohingya Reportscategory.
