Imagine if you had no access to Internet or cell service right now. In the middle of a pandemic.
Now, imagine you hear from an acquaintance that a “death virus” is gripping the world, spreading like wildfire. And it’s headed your way.
You have no way of knowing how or where it’s spreading. All you’re told is that if you catch it, you will likely die. And the only way to protect yourself is to stay away from people and wash your hands.
Except that you live in a mud-floor shelter your family cobbled together from pieces of bamboo, tarpaulin and garbage. And it is inside a refugee camp with triple the population density of Manhattan. And you don’t have access to a bar of soap, let alone clean water — the communal hand pump on the other side of the camp is the only water source.
This grim scene is what the Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh are facing right now. Bangladesh has cut off almost all Internet and cell service inside Cox’s Bazar, effectively isolating one million Rohingya from the outside world, while simultaneously erecting fencing to keep them trapped inside the camps. Aid workers have pulled out, and panic has set in. Caged in and cut off from life-saving information, the Rohingya are living in a COVID-19 tinderbox.
An outbreak could wreak havoc on these survivors of genocide who have already endured so much. Jewish World Watch is continuing our work on behalf of the Rohingya in the camps, advocating for their rights and supporting our innovative local partners as they find solutions to overcome the many complicating factors that make COVID-19 an existential threat inside the world’s largest refugee camp.
Jewish World Watch is currently working with our trusted on-the-ground partners inside the camps to circumvent the telecommunications ban to get the Rohingya the information they need to protect themselves and their families.
One of our grantees inside the camps runs the only operational radio station broadcasting inside the camps. Since news of the pandemic first reached the camps, our partner has been using funding from Jewish World Watch to enable youth from the Rohingya camps and Bangladeshi host communities to create original programming on COVID-19 that offers guidance on how to prevent its spread. In the absence of Internet, radio has become a lifeline for the Rohingya — especially programming in their own dialect and tailored to their particular concerns.
But, unlike mobile phones which were once prevalent throughout the camps, radios are in shorter supply. To ensure that its programming reaches as many refugees as possible, and with your support, our partner is mounting loudspeakers on rickshaws and deploying them to all corners of the camps to broadcast COVID-related information around the clock. In this way, we are helping to protect the Rohingyas’ freedom of information and ensure that all the refugees get the information they need to understand the disease and protect their families.
To be sure, COVID-19 has hit us all hard, impacting daily life in very real ways. But, as we stay indoors to protect ourselves and our families — and our countries turn inward to battle this scourge — we must not forget the world’s most vulnerable, or allow them to be further persecuted while the world is focused on combating this disease.
Cox’s Bazar is the world’s largest refugee settlement — a vast constellation of 34 camps hosting more than 1 million Rohingya refugees, most of whom fled genocide at the hands of the Myanmar military in August 2017. The densely packed camps house nearly 100,000 people per square mile; they live in tiny makeshift structures that encroach upon one another and regularly slide down hillsides during relentless bouts of rain. Aside from a few main roads, arteries that run through the camps, only narrow dirt paths cut through the never-ending sea of need.
A view of the Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Photo by Rares Michael Ghilezan
Sanitation is woefully sub-par, adequate health care is scarce, chronic health issues are rampant and clean running water and soap are extremely difficult to come by. Basic prophylactic health measures — such as social distancing, proper hand hygiene and self-isolation — are impossible to implement in this environment. Yet, COVID-19 is coming to the camps — if it hasn’t arrived already. A dearth of testing makes it impossible to know.
In August 2017, in a profound humanitarian gesture, Bangladesh welcomed a mass exodus of nearly 800,000 fleeing Rohingya from neighboring Myanmar. Since then, Buddhist-majority Myanmar, which now faces multiple legal battles for the atrocities unleashed upon the Rohingya, has failed to put any changes in place to guarantee safe, voluntary, and sustainable return for this Muslim minority group. Instead, Myanmar has continued to relentlessly persecute the 600,000 Rohingya remaining inside its borders, subjecting them to a brutal apartheid system and an ongoing armed conflict replete with war crimes and other atrocities. About 125,000 Rohingya are fenced inside open-air internment camps in Myanmar, where severe deprivation may result in their eventual demise. The United Nations has determined the risk of genocide to the Rohingya still inside Myanmar to be as high as ever. There is grave concern that the government of Myanmar, by purposefully neglecting its duty to protect the remaining Rohingya, will bring about their annihilation simply by allowing COVID-19 to run its course. It could also see the world’s preoccupation with containment efforts as an opportunity to quietly finish the clearance operations it began years ago.
In the face of Myanmar’s refusal to enact real changes or accept accountability for what it has done to its own people, Bangladesh has grown increasingly restless, seeing the Rohingyas’ prolonged stay as inevitable. Yet, even given the challenges of providing for such a large population of poor, traumatized, and vulnerable people, Bangladesh must do more to protect the Rohingya than the genocidal regime from which they fled. Bangladesh should not use COVID-19 response as a cover to continue eroding the rights of the Rohingya, in contravention of its obligations under international law.
Since Bangladesh first opened its borders to the Rohingya, controls have been put in place to disincentivize the refugees from getting too comfortable or deciding to stay for the long-term. The Rohingya are not allowed to work in the host community or access the public-school system. After the failure of multiple sham repatriation efforts brokered between the governments of Bangladesh and Myanmar, the Bangladeshi Camp Authority’s restrictions markedly increased.
Beginning on September 1, 2019, the government of Bangladesh banned the Rohingya from using 3G and 4G Internet, imposed severe restrictions on mobile phone usage inside the camps, and confiscated more than 20,000 SIM cards – effectively cutting the Rohingya off from the outside world. Until recently, the flurry of humanitarian aid workers and activists working in the camps, tempered the effects of this information vacuum. Aid workers were the conduits of information for the refugees, keeping them apprised of developments in the outside world. But, all that has changed since early April with the appearance of COVID-19 in Cox’s Bazar City, just an hour’s drive from the camps.
Bangladesh quickly moved to institute a camp-wide lockdown and the suspension of all non-essential relief work inside the camps — stripping humanitarian assistance down to bare-bones health, nutrition, water, and sanitation services. The Bangladeshi authorities also ramped up efforts to quickly erect barbed-wire fencing and guard towers around the perimeter of the entire settlement. This was done under the guise of protecting the Rohingya population by controlling who enters the camps. But fencing construction had actually been underway for months prior to ensure—in the words of Home Minister Asaduzzaman Kahn Kamal — that Rohingya do not “leave the camp and join our community.”
The erection of fencing has bred additional anxiety and wariness among the refugees, compromising their willingness to trust in and comply with Bangladeshi government mandates or recommendations during this public health crisis. The fencing also poses an obstruction to humanitarian access and makes it significantly harder for refugees to exit the camps for the type of lifesaving services unavailable inside the camps, yet necessary in many cases of infection. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is in the process of constructing only two isolation and treatment centers with 100 beds each to serve all 34 camps.
Since the Internet and wireless bans began, the Rohingyas’ lack of access to information has hampered the lives of the refugees, and also those supporting them in their survival. Humanitarian aid providers have been hindered in their ability to communicate and coordinate while in the camps, making service delivery far less effective. And now, the information vacuum has become a matter of life or death.
The Internet blackout blocks access to information about the disease, its spread, and how the Rohingya can best protect themselves in their already compromised circumstances. Aid workers and community leaders are limited to in-person, door-to-door information delivery, which contravenes all public health recommendations and dramatically restricts the number of refugees who can be reached.
This has placed the lives of those canvasing the camps at risk, including religious leaders and camp elders who tend to be older and are, therefore, especially vulnerable to complications of COVID-19. The Bangladeshi Camp Authority has directed the Rohingya to self-isolate and to call a hotline run by the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research if they experience symptoms. But, without phone service, following this protocol is impossible. Symptomatic Rohingya will have to weave through the crowded camps to access health centers, risking along the way widespread community contagion.
The blackout also means the camps are susceptible to rumors that spread like wildfire. In a climate where distrust and anxiety run high, engaging community leaders to assuage fears and communicate clear and culturally tailored messaging is critical to community buy-in, effective preparedness and response. Such collaborative and coordinated efforts can only be accomplished when channels of communication are fully operational — something the Internet ban renders impossible. In addition, the Internet shutdown hinders aid groups’ ability to conduct contact tracing or coordinate actual emergency lifesaving operations.
Noted Rohingya expert Azeem Ibrahim warns that if coronavirus makes its way into the camps, “virtually everyone in those camps is guaranteed to get it, and as many as 20% of those who get it are likely to die.” This could amount to 200,000 people—a number that far exceeds the number of Rohingya killed by the Myanmar military. International humanitarian assessments predict the mortality rate in Cox’s Bazar will be much higher than global averages. The Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health has urged governments to brace for the worst-case scenario: infections ranging from 119-504 in the first 30 days after an initial case, and rising to between 424,798 and 543,647 within 12 months.
As Rohingya refugee Sawyeddollah wrote in Frontier Myanmar, “if the Bangladesh government leaves us disconnected not only from the outside world but also from one another, it is increasing the risks of a deadly outbreak in the Rohingya refugee camps. In such cramped conditions, with so many people who are vulnerable, the potential impact is terrifying.” The Bangladeshi government must do everything it can to brace for and mitigate the contagion, including by eliminating any and all restrictive policies whose rights-effacing nature becomes deadly in a health crisis of such magnitude. Myanmar — a regime facing genocide charges on multiple fronts — has also fenced in the remaining Rohingya and baned all telecommunications in the townships where they live. Bangladesh, as the country that has offered the Rohingya a safe haven from annihilation, should and can do better for this survivor population.
In the meantime, the tireless organizations still operating in the camps soldier on, despite these restrictions and against all odds. We cannot stand idly by and wait for Bangladesh to lift the bans and stop the fencing. The risk to the Rohingya is immense and growing greater with each passing day that prevention and preparedness are not being delivered in an optimal way.