Montage scenes of early morning on river Naf | Music | 00:00 |
| LLOYD: A new day on the River Naf. | 00:20 |
| For centuries fishermen plied this sleepy waterway that divides Burma and Bangladesh. It hasn't always been so tranquil. | 00:27 |
Archive of Rohingyas mass exodus in 1990 | The early 1990s. A Muslim community called the Rohingyas is forced into the Naf after a campaign of intimidation by the Burmese military. A quarter of a million crossed the river, seeking sanctuary in Muslim Bangladesh. In Burma, they're persecuted, denied basic rights like citizenship and the freedom to marry. | 00:39 |
| The army burned their villages and executed them, dumping bodies on mud flats as a warning. | 01:11 |
Hafez weeping | Survivors hoped Bangladesh would offer a fresh start. They were wrong. | 01:22 |
Hafez | HAFEZ: My people are rotting. Our kids are hungry and thirsty. It's been seventeen years of oppression and we still don't have peace. | 01:30 |
Refugee camp | Music | 01:51 |
| LLOYD: Naya Para. This is the largest refugee camp still in operation. | 01:57 |
Food distribution | Handouts of basic staples are all that keeps the Rohingyas this side of starvation. Every two weeks, families line up to collect a fortnight's rations. There's a strict limit on how much they can have. | 02:10 |
Shahab queues for rations | Shahab Meah arrived in 1991. There was a time when he felt humiliation accepting charity. But that's long since passed. | 02:27 |
| SHAHAB: I came here because of oppression. The Burmese government was dictatorial. They closed our madrassas and mosques, and seized our land. We couldn't take the brutality anymore. So we came over here. | 02:40 |
Shahab carrying sack of grain | LLOYD: The family fled torture and forced labour, hoping to start a better life. But experience has taught them otherwise. | 03:04 |
| SHAHAB: The food ration is not enough for all of us. We have to buy extra. That's difficult. | 03:13 |
Shahab and family | The heat is unbearable in summer and there isn't enough firewood. | 03:19 |
Hamid reading | LLOYD: His 9 year old son Hamid was born in the camp. Denied education, he lags years behind. And knows nothing of life outside. NOORJEHAN: I want him to study to become a religious teacher. | 03:24 |
Noorjehan | But our days pass in worry. If anyone had the opportunity to live in a good place, would they live here? | 03:45 |
Family start looking around | LLOYD: Suddenly, the family doesn't seem so willing to talk. | 03:57 |
Camp guards | It's then we notice that we're not alone. | 04:04 |
Shahab and family | SHAHAB: If they find out what we've said , they'll put me in jail. | 04:07 |
Lloyd moves location | LLOYD: We stop recording and move to a new location. But the Bangladeshi minders follow. | 04:15 |
| HABIB: Hello how are you?... | 04:25 |
Habib talking to children | LLOYD: Habib, the eldest son, suggested we meet at his workplace. He was 7 when he arrived in the camp. Now at 22, Habib is a volunteer teacher. | 04:27 |
Habib inside teaching | For the first five years of the camps' existence schools weren't allowed. Educating refugees was thought to be encouraging them to stay. Even now, all that's permitted are primary level classes.. But there's a desperate shortage of teachers and books. Classes are taught by refugees with no teaching qualifications. | 04:45 |
| HABIB: We would like to go to college and to attend university but we cannot. | 05:09 |
Habib | If those men in charge of the campo heard me say the government will not agree to classes above grade 5 - they would implicate me in a case and put me in jail | 05:18 |
Yusuf teaching | LLOYD: In the class next door, one of Habib's colleagues had an even more bizarre tale of mistreatment. | 05:29 |
| YUSUF: One of the guards intercepted me and asked why I was wearing trousers. | 05:40 |
Yusuf | He made me lie down, kicked me and hit me on my hands and legs. As a refugee if you wear pants and shirts, they torture you. | 05:45 |
Man washes in lungi at shower | LLOYD: Most of the men in this part of the world wrap themselves in cotton lungis. Many Rohingyas complained that breaking that tradition is seen as impertinence -- an attempt to rise above their lowly refugee status. | 05:58 |
Mohammad Asaduzzaman | But officials scoffed at the story. | 06:14 |
| ASADUZZAMAN: No such allegation has come to my notice -- that a man has been beaten for wearing trousers. No such allegation whatever. | 06:16 |
| LLOYD: Mohammad Asaduzzaman is the Bangladesh Government official in charge. He denied a long list of refugee complaints, ranging from threats, bribery, and corruption to arbitrary detention. | 06:27 |
| ASADUZZAMAN: They have the right to live in peace in the refugee camp. Nobody will disturb them or harass them -they have that right- 24 hours a day we ensure that. | 06:39 |
Camp guard with stick | Music | 06:53 |
| LLOYD: The guardians of those so called "rights" are stick wielding policemen. These are the most visible culprits of a pattern of official abuse documented over the years by credible outside agencies including the United Nations. PHIRI: Forced prostitution, allegations of | 06:58 |
Phiri. Super: Pia Prytz Phiri | extortion, some of the refugees do manage to get out and work and the money is taken away from them. Abuses such as stealing rations they are actually getting from the international communities, from UN aid - | 07:20 |
Camp guards | Stealing food. Stealing other non food items such as mosquito nets which have been handed out, plastic sheeting which are very important, etcetera. | 07:33 |
Refugees at camp | LLOYD: Refugee camps were set up in a hurry. They were never meant to be permanent. But 17 years later they've become institutional. | 07:48 |
| The money to run them comes from the United Nations. But the UN has very little control -- the Bangladesh government calls the shots. | 08:00 |
| PHIRI: UNHCR's work is always a challenge and I think Bangladesh has been no exception. | 08:11 |
Phiri. Super: Pia Prytz Phiri | Yes, we've had some very difficult discussions over the past year with the government but I also think that this has opened doors to actually review the situation and jointly come up with some different ways of looking at the situation of these 26,000 refugees. Human beings. | 08:16 |
Refugee children at camp | LLOYD: A generation of children has been born and raised in the camps knowing no other world. | 08:35 |
| Music | 08:46 |
Hafez and family | LLOYD: Hafez Salelahmad wanted to tell us himself that he's been beaten, jailed and harassed during his 17 year stay. | 09:02 |
Hafez | HAFEZ: If we mention these issues to anyone who visits us, if we make contact and speak to them, the minute you go away we'll get beaten because we spoke to you. | 09:13 |
Lloyd with Hafez and family | LLOYD: Mr Hafez wanted me to see what life was really like inside a refugee shelter eaten down by termites. | 09:36 |
| His wife and five children survive by begging, after the government confiscated their ration book. | 09:45 |
| HAFEZ: We live in worry. When will people like you bring us justice and peace? That is all we want. | 09:52 |
| LLOYD: His wife begged me to offer them poison, so the family could escape this life of relentless poverty. | 10:06 |
| HAFEZ: We are living in great pain. We cannot talk freely. Many have died because of bad health facilities. There are no medicines. | 10:14 |
Lloyd holding Hafez's hand | LLOYD: Bangladesh's government has been trying to starve out refugees in the hope they'd return to Burma sooner. The strategy worked for a while. Many did go home. But 26,000 Rohingyas stayed behind, refusing to believe that Burma is any safer now than it was 17 years ago. | 10:43 |
Boat journey on River Naf | Music | 11:04 |
| LLOYD: As if life in the official camp isn't bad enough, for some refugees living down the river, conditions are much worse. | 11:21 |
| There are many thousands of Rohingyas living here in Bangladesh who don't have the protection of the United Nations. And life for them is that much harder. | 11:33 |
Camp on edge of river | Nestled on marshland on the Naf River is a makeshift camp of 6,000 homeless Rohingya refugees. They grouped together three years ago when Bangladesh launched a crackdown to round up Rohingyas living openly in the local area. | 11:45 |
| Only this time, no one came to help. | 12:05 |
| The squalor makes the UN camp look first class. | 12:20 |
Gulzar picking weeds | We found Gulzar Begum and her children picking weeds -- the main ingredient in their one daily meal . | 12:29 |
| GULZAR: We survive by collecting leaves and yams from the forest. We boil them and eat them . | 12:39 |
Gulzar prepares weeds with children | Today we may get to eat but we don't know about tomorrow and there's no-one to care. | 12:49 |
| LLOYD: Bangladesh won't feed any member of this camp, and won't let any outside agency do it either. Hundreds of families live in perpetual fear of starvation. | 12:57 |
| GULZAR: Whatever be Allah's mercy, whatever my children bring - rice or wild yam - I'll make a light dish . We'd starve if they can't bring anything. | 13:09 |
Gulzar sieves rice | LLOYD: For Gulzar Begum, this journey into misery began just over the border in Burma. | 13:23 |
Gulzar washes children | After their land was confiscated, she and her husband were forced into slavery by the Burmese army. Gulzar watched as soldiers beat him to death for dropping a heavy sack of rice. | 13:29 |
Gulzar | GULZAR: My children go mad when I mention their father. My own blood. | 13:42 |
Gulzar's children | LLOYD: Gulzar has six daughters and one son, but she's not sure who fathered them. Even when her husband was alive, she was raped by Burmese soldiers. It's a pattern of sexual abuse that continues to this day in the camp. | 13:49 |
| Because of her experience, Gulzar forbids her eldest daughter to leave the shelter. | 14:05 |
| GULZAR: The local men come here and eye her up. | 14:12 |
Gulzar | They come and demand her, so I have to keep her out of sight. | 14:16 |
Riverbank camp | LLOYD: The Rohingyas are living in filth, just a stone's throw from passing pleasure boats. At monsoon time, the water rises, inundating low-lying shelters. | 14:27 |
| Water and sewage mix and flow all year round. It's a recipe for disease that's cut life expectancy dramatically short. | 14:42 |
Children in camp | Music | 14:50 |
Moses tends to children | LLOYD: But finally, help has arrived. Doctors Without Borders set up an emergency feeding centre to tackle malnutrition. | 15:02 |
| Kenyan, Moses Analo is the doctor in charge. | 15:14 |
| MOSES: When we arrived it was like one child dying every day. | 15:18 |
Moses | But once we started providing health care, the numbers have gone down. We get like total of deaths 5 to 7 for the whole camp in a month. | 15:23 |
Women with children | We have women dying because of complications of delivery, we have adults dying of tuberculosis and the children mainly of respiratory tract infections are the commonest cause, and diarrhoea as well. | 15:35 |
Lloyd with Dr Moses | LLOYD: Doctors Without Borders are winning the fight to save lives using a simple paste... So what is that? | 15:51 |
| MOSES: We call it plumpy nut. | 16:00 |
Children eat plumpy nut | It's like peanut butter. Made of peanuts plus some sugar, some milk and vitamins and some minerals. | 16:04 |
Camp inhabitants collect water | MOSES: Well I was really surprised that people were living in a place like this. it's congested, they had no latrines, the sources of water were very few and the water wasn't good. | 16:18 |
Toilet block | LLOYD: Just getting a toilet block built was the equivalent of a major diplomatic breakthrough with the Bangladeshis. | 16:32 |
Lloyd with Dr Moses | LLOYD: And after you built these did it make a difference to people's general health? | 16:39 |
| MOSES: Yeah it has made some improvement. At least the area is cleaner than it was before, the flies have decreased and we're seeing fewer cases of diarrhoea coming into our clinic. | 16:42 |
Camp residents | Music | 16:55 |
| LLOYD: The Rohingyas are truly on the way to nowhere. Unwelcome in their land of birth. Barely tolerated by their neighbours. | 17:02 |
| GULZAR: If peace comes to my country, if there is democracy then I will return. | 17:19 |
Gulzar with children | But if there is no democracy, no change in law, if husbands and sons are killed then tomorrow they (nods to the kids) will also be killed. I will not go there! But I'll stay in this Muslim country even if I get bombed. | 17:25 |
| Music | 17:40 |
| LLOYD: Unless there's a sudden change of attitude by Bangladesh, the so called unofficial refugees seem destined to rot by the roadside until they give up and go back to Burma. | 17:47 |
| Music | 18:00 |
| Reporter: Peter Lloyd Camera: Wayne McAllister Editor: Byran Milliss Research: Mavourneen Dineen Producer: Simi Chakrabarti Production Company: ABC Australia - Foreign Correspondent |
18:11 |