What awaits Bob Rae? Abused Rohingya living in epic squalor in Bangladesh
OTTAWA — Picture 2,300 football fields side-by-side, home to hundreds of thousands of people living under bamboo and plastic sheeting — no flushing toilets or running water to be found.
More than two-thirds are women and children, many of whom were victims of sexual violence or some continuing form of exploitation. Much of the area used to be forested but the trees have been cut to make way for the shelters, so the occasional rampaging wild elephant tramples through.
That’s how Michael Dunford describes what’s become of Bangladesh’s lush, southeastern countryside since late August when 600,000 traumatized Rohingya Muslims fled Myanmar in what’s been described by many — including Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland — as ethnic cleansing. They’ve swelled the ranks of fleeing Rohingya in Bangladesh to 900,000.
That’s just some of the scene that awaits Bob Rae, Canada’s newly appointed special envoy to the Rohingya refugee crisis. The former Ontario premier and ex-interim Liberal leader arrived Wednesday in the South Asian region as Myanmar’s fleeing Muslim population continues to seek refuge in Bangladesh, already one of the world’s poorest countries.