Last year, 13-year-old Dagmar Rothschild travelled to Bangladesh to visit the Rohingya refugee camps with the non-profit organisation BRAC. Here the young writer reflects on her journey and the impacts of discrimination
All photography by Dagmar Rothschild
I walk along the narrow dirt paths with sewage flowing through the gutters, the sound of screaming children fills the air. The roads are lined with huts held up by thin pieces of bamboo. I turn around looking at the thousands of tents that seem to go on forever as no matter how far I look it seems as if the people and the tents don’t stop. Standing in the centre of one of the largest refugee camps in the world which holds nearly a million Rohingya refugees, I feel as if I have been transported into another world. Follow LUX on Instagram: the.official.lux.magazine
A large number of Rohingya refugees fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh in August 2017 because they claim that the Burmese government was persecuting them for their religious (Muslim) beliefs. They say that fleeing the country was the only option since their jobs were being taken away, their houses were being burned down and the military had been using violence against them. The refugees reported shootings, beatings and rapes.
As I travelled through the camps, I began to realise that although nobody could ever call a place like this home, at least it provided the refugees with a feeling of safety, which is something that many of them have rarely experienced. A...