Sunday, April 08, 2018

Refugees Fleeing Violence In Myanmar Have A New Worry: Elephants



KUTUPALONG, Bangladesh ― Around midnight on Jan. 19, a heavy sound jolted Anwar Begum out of her sleep. Something was breaking down the bamboo beams holding up her makeshift hut in a refugee camp for displaced Rohingya in southeastern Bangladesh. Her husband, Yakub Ali, thought it was someone trying to break in.

Suddenly, the central pillar broke, hitting Begum in the head.

Dazed, she pulled herself out from under the collapsed hut. Once outside, she realized that it wasn’t a person destroying their house but an elephant. As the massive animal lunged again, Begum squeezed between its legs and ran to safety. Her screams had woken up the neighbors, who helped save Begum’s two young children from the rubble.


Her husband wasn’t as lucky. When Begum looked back inside her demolished home, there were splinters of bamboo sticking out of his body. “Blood was flowing everywhere,” she said in a recent interview.

Begum, 40, is one of more than 688,000 Rohingya who have been forced out of Myanmar’s western Rakhine State and into neighboring Bangladesh since Aug. 25, 2017. Although the Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group, have lived in Rakhine for centuries, the Myanmar government does not recognize them as citizens, and the violence against them has escalated over the last eight months. Many Rohingya have sought shelter in Bangladesh.

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