Amongst an Exiled People: A Solidarity Visit to the Rohingya People by Rev Dr Allan Samuel Palanna
Presence and witness are powerful experiential postures in discerning the depth of pain of communities. Representatives of the member churches of South Asia Region of the Council of World Mission (CWM), were invited to Cox Bazar, Bangladesh to immerse themselves amongst the bordered lives of the Rohingya people. The objective was to witness the ongoing dehumanisation of the most vulnerable communities in the world, fleeing the devastating ethnic cleansing. After the arduous process of getting administrative approval to visit the refugee camps, the rickety jeeps traversed through the narrow lanes to the camps of refuge. What met our eyes were waves of distressed people, jostling for space to get a share of provision distributed by the UN World Food Programme. Underneath the blaze of the relentless and unforgiving mid-day sun, the never-ending serpentine queue extended through the landscape bereft of a single vegetation. Women, men and children competed with one another to gain space in the crammed bylanes of the camp. Panning from a small hillock, one could see flimsy, hastily-constructed hutments spread across the dry horizon. As the group conversed with the people, tales of torture and massacre, whispers of abuse and hunger rent the air. To be a stranger in one’s own land because of an ethnic identity is indeed incomprehensible. Those involved in the everyday concerns of human beings and nature must be doubly anxious of the adverse changes affecting the most vulnerable communities and the environment across the world. What are the intersections between religion, politics, economics and their societal implications, most pertinently on the lives of the most vulnerable people and nature? are questions that demand a credible response. We are to be aware that Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh comprises of one of the largest habitations of the Rohingya people. The expansion site had a combined population of 547,616, making it the world's largest refugee camp, even much ahead of Dadaab in Kenya.
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INSiGHT | February 2021
