Rohingya man refugee again 40 years after leaving Bangla

Kutupalong: Nearly four decades ago Fazol Ahmed returned to his native Myanmar with his family under a Rohingya repatriation scheme. Now he is back in the teeming camps of Bangladesh with his wife and children, a refugee once again.

Mr Ahmed is among the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have crossed into Bangladesh since an upsurge in violence in neighbouring Myanmar in August that the UN has said amounts to ethnic cleansing. Unlike most, he has been here before.

Mr Ahmed’s family fled an earlier wave of violence against the Muslim minority in Myanmar’s Rakhine state in 1978, when he was still a child.

“We couldn’t take it any more,” he said, recalling the campaign of violence that forced his family of rice farmers from their village in mainly Buddhist Myanmar in 1978.

“They were kidnapping young people. They killed some and demanded ransoms for others,” he said, accusing the Myanmar army and the ethnic Rakhine Buddhists who also inhabit the state.

Mr Ahmed, who gave his age as 41 though his white-flecked beard and testimony suggest he is older, said there were far more people in the camps this time round. His story — recounted to AFP on n Kutupalong, the largest of the camps — underscores the intractable nature of the unfolding refugee crisis.

Impoverished, overcrowded Bangladesh is now home to nearly a million Rohingya refugees, the majority of whom have arrived in less than two months.