Bangladesh 12 Oct 2017 22:00
More than 600,000 Rohingya refugees have crossed to Bangladesh fleeing a campaign of ethnic cleansing carried out by the Burmese military since a recently emerged Rohingya insurgent group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), launched a series of coordinated attacks against positions of the Burmese security forces on 25 August. This is already the fastest human exodus since the genocide in Rwanda, and Bangladesh, an impoverished and overpopulated country, is barely able to cope with the refugee influx. The Rohingya have suffered severe persecution from the Burmese government since at least the late seventies, they were rendered stateless decades ago and are branded as "Bengalis", implying they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, despite the fact that they have deep historical roots in Arakan, a Buddhist-majority region in the northwest of Burma. These pictures were taken over a period of seven days on October 2017 in Cox's Bazar, the district in Bangladesh to which the Rohingya refugees flee and find shelter in overcrowded and overwhelmed refugee camps.