Arakan News Agency
More than 150 Rohingya children who have fled Myanmar to Bangladesh have been unable to meet with their parents who were separated from them when they fled their villages or when they arrived in the territory of Bangladesh since the recent wave of violence against the minority in October 2016.
“I kept looking for my father, but so far there is no information about him,” said a Rohingya child. I asked the neighbors who arrived from Myanmar if they knew where my father was. ”
When the military launched the operation in Myanmar in October 2016, many of the minority Rohingya Muslims who had been subjected to violence fled murder, rape and mass arson.
In the midst of the panic, the boy fled with his three brothers and their parents from their home in a village in the state of Arakan when the security forces came with the help of a group of Buddhist militia.
“When the Buddhists came to our village, everyone ran out of the house, and everyone tried to hide anywhere, and at that moment my father was lost,” the child told the BBC from a refugee camp in Kutupalong, in Cox’s Bazar district, Bangladesh.
To date, the child is still under the control of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), in cooperation with camp social workers, and is on the list of 169 separated or uneducated children who have arrived in Bangladesh since the recent unrest in Arakan, Myanmar, 2016.
Fifteen of them have so far been reunited with their parents or immediate family members, so there is hope, but it takes time.
UNICEF child protection officer Sheila Parvin Luna said the children who come are in shock and social workers need time to extract information such as the name of their village and so on.
