And, you know if COVID was rampaging like “wildfire” through CROWDED camps housing millions of “vulnerable” refugees the “carnage” would make headlines worldwide today!
Try as I might, I could find no new stories about my personal petri dish—the huge camp at Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh where we are told a million Muslim Rohingya live cheek by jowl in huts with no way to social distance.
I’ve been following the dire warnings on the expected crisis in the camps for months.
The first death at Cox’s Bazar was reported on June 3, here. That is over two weeks ago. We know of one more, so where is the carnage?
Here is a short video from the UN High Commissioner on Refugees and the World Health Organizationapparently in time for World Refugee Day today!
The UNHCR says this (not exactly what the Leftwing media is going to trumpet):
We have not seen, or not seen yet I should say, major outbreaks where we feared the most in large concentrations, in refugee camps.
Watch it:
But, see here that the international humanitarian industry has moved on to link the Chinese virus to hunger and is warning of a double whammy of starvation and death by COVID.
Here is one thing they say you can do!
Write to Congress and tell them to send more of your tax dollars (borrowed from China) to feed the world.
You can save lives by being an advocate for the hungry, especially the refugees. Bread for the World encourages citizens to write letters to Congress urging them to make global food aid a priority in the budget.
I will be watching and continue to report when (if!) the virus crisis does impact the world’s migrant populations—a real test of the value, or lack of value, of social distancing, or mask-wearing for that matter!
When I saw this headline (below) this morning, I figured this was it—COVID-19 was running like a “wildfire” through the largest refugee camp in the world—Cox’s Bazar—where reports say that a million “vulnerable” Muslim Rohingya live check to jowl in filthy conditions—a prime location for coronavirus “carnage.”
As COVID-19 deaths rise in Cox’s Bazar, is increased testing enough?
Regular readers know that I have been following the dire warnings now for months about the “catastrophe” the international humanitarian community and the mainstream media has been predicting for Cox’s Bazar and other large refugee camps around the world.
Described by the mainstream media as a “tinderbox,” no social distancing is possible at Cox’s Bazar refugee camp for Rohingya Muslims
See my previous post hereabout the first Chinese Virus death in the camp.
Now here is the story about how the deaths have been rising (remember the first case of Covid was reported a month ago)—rising to two!
MANILA — Bangladesh has reported a second death due to COVID-19 in the Rohingya refugee community in Cox’s Bazar on Tuesday along with five new positive cases.
[….]
Bangladesh has put areas of Cox’s Bazar on lockdown over the weekend. Cases in the district have gone over 1,000, according to the latest government data. However, only a small percentage comes from the refugee community in Cox’s Bazar, where 35 cases have been reported to date since the first one was confirmed last May 14.
So much for modeling out of Johns Hopkins!
An earlier modeling analysis by Johns Hopkins University in March projected that a single case there could lead to an estimated 119-504 cases under a low- to high-transmission scenario in the first 30 days.
“The numbers are not rising as we had feared. However, all the conditions are present for an extremely serious situation for one of the most marginalized people groups in the world,” Matt Ellingson, director of relief and humanitarian affairs at Food for the Hungry, told Devex last week.
We will be watching and reporting on this important test area for the value (or lack of value) of social distancing.
The best way to see my previous posts on the virus at Cox’s Bazar is to see my Rohingya Reports categorywhere I have archived all of my posts for the last dozen years about Rohingya refugees.
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.
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 Frontlineabout 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!
Ifirst 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.***
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.”
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.)
The dark underbelly of the giant globalist meatpacking industry in the US is being exposed as large numbers of slaughterhouse workers are creating US hotspots for the spread of the Chinese virus.
Neil Munro writing at Breitbarttakes a stab at finding out why the mainstream media, populated by Leftwing ideologues, have for years been on the side of the meat industry (I dubbed it BIG MEAT a number of years ago) as are the refugee resettlement contractors (six of nine are ‘religious’ charities)*** which have been acting as head hunters for globally owned corporations for decades. (See Bill Clinton brings refugee laborers to Iowa linked below.)
Wouldn’t you think the Lefties would be on the side of the struggling worker rather than acting like they are doing migrants and refugees a giant favor by admitting them to America and placing them in dreadful working conditions (now being exposed in the COVID crisis)?
There are many reasons they have turned a blind eye, but I think Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies provides one answer.
NYT Says Immigrants ‘Mourn’ Loss of Deadly, Low-Wage Meatpacking Jobs
Immigrants are “mourning” the loss of low-wage jobs in a Chinese-owned, crowded slaughterhouse run by Smithfield Foods in Sioux Falls, SD, according to an article in the New York Times.
Smithfield Foods, Inc., is a meat-processing company based in Smithfield, Virginia, in the United States, and a wholly-owned subsidiary of WH Group of China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithfield_Foods
The main character in the story is an immigrant from Sudan who has worked “11-hour days at Smithfield, six times a week for nearly seven years,” says the April 15 article:
[….]
The Chinese-owned hog disassembly plant has been shut down indefinitely after 600 workers caught the Chinese coronavirus while working alongside each other.
“Why would lefties be supporting this?” asked Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “The immigrants are working for low wages in terrible jobs!” The answer is that progressives prefer to pose as the defenders of migrants against claimed threats from ordinary Americans, he said, not from the real economic exploitation by employers.
[….]
The article ignores the American workers at the Sioux Falls mill and instead lauds migrants and refugees, most of whom are assigned jobs at the slaughterhouse by the government-funded refugee settlement groups that bring them into the United States as refugees.
[….]
Establishment journalists are now eager to downplay the painful impact of cheap migrant labor on Americans, Corcoran said. “The reporters are basically working for these globalist companies, for Brazil’s JBS [USA Holdings] and for China’s Smithfield Foods [in Sioux Falls]. They are carrying the water because they want more immigration. They are willing to overlook these workplace conditions, and that Americans would do these jobs if they paid enough — as they did at one time.”
Worshiping the god of diversity!
Who cares what the working conditions are when the Left is busy changing America by changing the people!
S**** the working conditions, we get diversity!
The reporters’ underlying message is that the migrants’ pain and labor are worth trading to get more diversity, said Krikorian. “These holier-than-thou-types [are] saying ‘We are doing such a good thing by letting them in the country, when it is, in fact, horrible work, but it is all so good in the end because we get diversity.’”
If you bother to read the NYT story Munro dissects, although not explicitly stated, there is an underlying message that these poor migrants are slaving away to provide our hams and bacon in Trump’s mean America.
See my BIG MEAT archive byclicking here. I had already been writing about meatpackers within the first year of writing RRW and their refugee labor appetites when I came across this news in 2008 about how Bill Clinton first came up with the idea of supplying his meatpacking buddies with Bosnian refugee laborers—in Iowa!
And, on the issue of health, maybe one day, it won’t be COVID we are talking about, but some of the other diseases we don’t screen for as migrants enter the US—I can dream!
*** For new readers these (below) are the nine federally-funded refugee contractors that operate as a huge conveyor belt monopolizing all refugee placement in America. Some have received direct funding from meat giants.
And, they do not limit their advocacy toward only legal immigration programs, but are heavily involved in supporting the lawlessness at our borders.
The question isn’t as much about refugees per se, but about who is running federal immigration policy now and into the future?
I continue to argue that these nine contractors are the heart of America’s Open Borders movement and thus there can never be long-lasting reform of US immigration policy when these nine un-elected phony non-profits are paid by the taxpayers to work as community organizers pushing an open borders agenda.
And, you know if COVID was rampaging like “wildfire” through CROWDED camps housing millions of “vulnerable” refugees the “carnage” would make headlines worldwide today!
