‘I Would Rather Die Than Go Back’: Rohingya Refugees Settle Into Life In Bangladesh
Source: NPR
By JASON BEAUBIEN
The Myanmar soldiers arrived in the morning, Dildar Begum says. They surrounded her village. It was in the days before the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha and her family had been preparing for the upcoming feast — a feast that would never happen. In the ensuing attack, Begum says, government troops killed 29 members of her family.
“It’s been 12 months that I’m living in Bangladesh, but there’s not any days in which I don’t remember my family,” she says. “I miss them every day. I shed tears from my eyes for them every day.”
In late August of last year, Begum was among hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who fled across a muddy brown river into neighboring Bangladesh, escaping what they now refer to as “the genocide.” They arrived with horrific accounts of Myanmar soldiers and pro-government militias attacking their villages, killing their neighbors, raping their children and torching their houses.
Categories: Asia, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Rohingya Muslims, The Muslim Times
