A view of the rari camp. Photo by Kazi Riasat Alve.
A widow on her way back home from the water well. Photo by Kazi Riasat Alve.
Suhara, left, and Mohammad Salim, right, work together as majhi to solve the widows' problems. Photo by Kazi Riasat Alve.
Rari camp residents gather in the communal area together to pray and socialize. Photo by Kazi Riasat Alve.
Amena arrived at the rari camp in September 2017 with her three children after violence erupted in her former village in the Rakhine State town of Buthidaung. “When the Burmese army was shooting at people in the village, my husband got killed in the cross-fire,” she recalls. “I didn’t see him die, but when the shooting stopped, I waited for him all night and he never came back home.”Amena says she joined a group of neighboring families and ran to the forest with her children. It took them nearly ten days to get to Bangladesh, she recalls, as her and her children took shelter in the forest for days at a time to make sure Burmese militants weren’t following them. They subsisted on whatever they could find in the forest. Under normal circumstances, it would’ve taken less than a single day to cross the border.
Camp residents share a kitchen. Photo by Kazi Riasat Alve.
Suhara. Photo by Kazi Riasat Alve.
Tahera lives alone in her hut. Photo by Kazi Riasat Alve.
Tahera standing outside camp entrance in a traditional Rohingya outfit. Photo by Kazi Riasat Alve.
On June 6, the UN signed a secret Rohingya repatriation deal with Myanmar. After it leaked online, Rohingya advocates vehemently opposed its terms. They say the deal doesn’t address citizenship or clearly define where exactly the Rohingya would live, now that their land is destroyed. Rohingya advocates fear they’d be placed in camps in Myanmar with worse conditions than the refugee camps in Bangladesh.
Suhara oversees young boys from neighboring settlements volunteering to fix her hut. Photo by Kazi Riasat Alve.
