A persecuted Rohingya woman has told how she was forced to run from Myanmar's military moments after giving birth and before her baby's umbilical cord had even been cut.
By M H Ahssan
Hamida, 30, said her village of Quachong, Maungdaw, in Rakhine State was attacked on September 2. She was at home, full-term in her pregnancy, when she heard a commotion outside, followed by the sound of explosions.
Her face was expressionless as she recounted: 'The mob invaded our village, they fired at us with rocket launchers and chased us and even shot us as we were running away. Then they set fire to the village and it burned to the ground.'
With her baby due any day, Hamida was forced to flee to the forest with her husband and their six other children where they hid.
For 48 hours, they stayed in the forest. Then Hamida felt the first pangs of labour. Terrified, she realised her baby was coming but she had nothing, not even a blanket, and was forced to lay down on the forest floor.
The labour was quick, and three hours later she delivered a healthy baby boy. But suddenly, before Hamida had a chance to recover, she heard noises in the forest. Fearing it was the military, the family had to move or risk being found.
Before the umbilical cord had even been cut, Hamida was forced to flee.
'I ran with the baby still attached. They were chasing us, and I knew they had guns and knives,' Hamida said.
'I was in agony, but what could I do? If they catch us, they kill us, and my newborn baby.'
She does not know how long she ran. Blinded by panic and searing pain she clutched her newborn and prayed she would take him out of harm's way.
When the family were finally able to rest again, Hamida's husband cut down two pieces of bamboo and used this to sharpen the blade of his old machete. With this, he cut the umbilical cord.
Hamida spent three more days in the forest recovering from the birth. There, she and her husband named the baby, Hossain Shaheb. With little food to be scavenged and no drinking water, the family had to make their way to Bangladesh.
Hamida said: 'We just slept on the ground under the open sky, and we had no food to eat. We went days where all we found was water. The other kids were crying hysterically from hunger.'
The family walked for another two days to reach the Naf River, the border with Bangladesh. There, a boatman took pity on the family and brought them across for free. He offered his home to them and gave them the first meal they had eaten in days. They stayed for two nights.
After the short stop, the family headed to the informal refugee settlement in Gumdum, where 50,000 refugees had temporarily resided. Hamida's husband bought some bamboo and a tarpaulin to build a shelter, and with the cooking pots and blankets gifted by the kind-hearted boatman, the family tried to make a home.
'We don't want to be here, we have no happiness here,' Hamida said, her voice cracking with emotion. She looked down tenderly at her 15-day-old son. 'But we had to leave, or we would have been killed.'
Sat under plastic sheeting that had been fashioned into a makeshift shelter, little Hossain whimpered in her arms, too feeble to cry.
'He's hungry,' said Hamida, looking down at him helplessly, 'But what can I do? I have no milk.' She had barely eaten in days, and as her body grew weak, she was no longer lactating.
Her other children pawed at her, asking for food, but she had nothing to give them. Her husband had gone to find an aid distribution and pick up supplies of food and drinking water. But Hamida knew there was not enough for everyone, and expected she would go to sleep hungry once again.
Hamida is one of 422,000 Rohingya refugees who have fled violence in Myanmar since August 25.
There have been clashes between different ethnic groups in the Rakhine state of Myanmar for decades. The Rohingya people, of which there were an estimated 1.1 million living in Rakhine, are denied citizenship, as it is argued they are not Myanmar nationals but descendants of Bengali immigrants. The Rohingya people claim they have lived on the land for hundreds of years, and that their parents and grandparents were born there.
Tensions escalated, and on the August 25, a group of Rohingya extremists carried out a series of attacks on police checkpoints, killing around a dozen people. In response, the Myanmar government initiated a military crackdown to deal with the 'terrorists'.
The events that have unfurled since were declared a 'textbook example of ethnic cleansing' by United Nations human rights chief, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein. The Bangladesh Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, who visited the camps to meet with refugees accused Myanmar of 'genocide'.
Arriving Rohingya refugees unanimously report mass killings, gang-rape and torture. They say that armed military and Rakhine youth gangs attacked their people and burned their homes. Access to the region is restricted, so accurate accounts of what happened are yet to be ascertained.
As hundreds of thousands of civilians pour over the border, there are a growing number of testimonies that indicate gross human rights violations.
In the past few days, the settlement of Gumdum was cleared and refugees moved on to established camps. The Bangladesh government has allocated 2,000 acres to house refugees with plans for a super camp underway.
Aid agencies are struggling after the unexpected influx of people - one of the fastest growing refugee crisis in more than 20-years. Most refugees fled in terror, with little or no belongings. Many are wounded and traumatised, and grieving lost loved ones.
Conditions in the crowded camps are abysmal. People are hungry, thirsty and dirty. With few toilet facilities, refugees are digging holes they partition off with tarpaulins. In the frequent monsoon rains, camps are flooded and sewage flows through the camps. Water-borne diseases such as diarrhoea are spreading, adding another burden to already massively overwhelmed health services.
In efforts to meet the escalating humanitarian need, aid agencies are trying to scale up their response as quickly as possible. At an Action Against Hunger centre, 190,000 meals have been prepared for refugees in three weeks. Teams of volunteers prepare hot rice dishes, served at the centre and distributed at the camps tent by tent.
With difficulties in getting resources to the rural and isolated corner of Bangladesh, many people are being left hungry. Nipin Gangadharan, Country Director for Action Against Hunger in Bangladesh said: 'We are urgently scaling up our response, but the numbers of those in dire need are unprecedented.'
Desperation has led to fights breaking out in scrambles for minimal supplies. At a relief distribution last week, three people including two children were killed as frenzied refugees stampeded a truck bringing relief packages.
Earlier this week, a storm brought 8cm of rain in 24 hours. Shelters in a settlement at the bottom of a hill were entirely submerged. Families were displaced once again. Some affected refugees were seen swimming to safety, while others used boats.
As he helped his children into a canoe, Mohammed said that he had lost rice donated to his family, and cooking pots they had carried with from Myanmar had floated away. Nearby, the corpse of a middle-aged man was pulled from the water, and minutes later a woman ran to the scene in tears. Her father had gone missing the night before, and she wanted to identify the body.
Médecins Sans Frontières today warned that the situation was on the tipping point of a catastrophe. Robert Onus, MSF Emergency Coordinator said, 'hundreds of thousands of refugees are living in an extremely precarious situation, and all the preconditions for a public health disaster are there.'
HOW THE ROHINGYA CRISIS HAS ESCALATED
The Rohingya refugee crisis is worsening daily as new arrivals from Myanmar join more than 410,000 from the Muslim minority who have fled to Bangladesh since late August, overwhelming camps short of food, water and shelter.
August 25: Fierce riposte to militant attacks
Early on August 25, hundreds of Rohinyga militants stage coordinated attacks on 30 police posts in Myanmar's westernmost state of Rakhine. At least 12 police are killed.
The Myanmar army hits back fast and hard with 'clearance operations' in Rohingya villages. It says it is trying to flush out insurgents from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army.
But witnesses tell of Rohingya civilians being massacred in retaliation, with mortars and machine guns fired at villagers fleeing to the Bangladesh border.
The crackdown sparks an exodus from Rohingya villages, which are soon burning so fiercely the flames and smoke are visible from Bangladesh.
September 5: Refugee storm hits Bangladesh
Within 11 days of the attacks, more than 120,000 Rohingya have flooded into Bangladesh, overwhelming the handful of ill-equipped refugee camps around Cox's Bazar.
Many arrive desperate for food and water after walking for more than a week over hills and through dense jungle. Some need urgent treatment for bullet wounds and machete gashes.
Bangladesh already houses at least 300,000 Rohingya in camps near the border. The fresh influx creates a dire shortage of food, clean water and shelter.
September 6: Suu Ky denounces 'iceberg of misinformation'
Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, under increasing international pressure, says a 'huge iceberg of misinformation' is distorting the global picture of events in Rakhine.
In her first comments since the August 25 attacks, Suu Kyi says fake news is 'calculated to create a lot of problems between different communities' and to promote 'the interest of the terrorists'.
But fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureates Malala Yousafzai and Desmond Tutu criticise Suu Kyi. Hundreds of thousands sign a Change.org petition demanding the Nobel committee withdraw her award but it refuses.
September 11: Violence amounts to ethnic cleansing, UN says
As the crisis worsens, UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein says Myanmar's systematic attacks bear the hallmarks of a 'textbook example of ethnic cleansing'.
Rights groups warn of a final push by the army and Buddhist mobs to drive the stateless Rohingya from Myanmar for good.
Landmines claim more victims, with three Rohingya killed in a blast while fleeing Myanmar.
September 16: Rohingya exodus tops 400,000
The UN declares that more than 400,000 refugees have arrived in Bangladesh since August 25 - more than a third of the total Rohingya population of 1.1 million living in Rakhine.
Conditions at the camps become unbearable as numbers swell to breaking point. Women and children are badly injured in stampedes for food, water and clothes as aid agencies warn the crisis risks getting out of control.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina departs for the UN to plead for global help in coping with the Rohingya deluge.
