Brandon Stanton's Blog, page 124

“It was 2 AM when they came to our village. They set all our...

“It was 2 AM when they came to our village. They set all our houses on fire. There was no time to grab anything. Not even food. All we could do was run. For fifteen days we walked without any food. There were bodies all along the path. Only fear kept us going. We had no energy. People were sitting down to rest and never standing up again. We started eating leaves off the trees. I couldn’t breastfeed anymore. One of my children died on the sixth day. Another died a few days later. Nobody even talked about it. We were too weak. I could barely even cry. We just walked on in silence. When we arrived at the camps, the doctor told me my baby was not going to survive. But by the grace of Allah, she lived.”

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This week I’m sharing a series of first hand accounts from Rohingya refugees. The Rohingya are a persecuted ethnic minority who have been violently evicted from Myanmar by Buddhist extremists. Over the past year, nearly 700,000 Rohingya have been driven from their homes and are now residing in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Their living conditions are already dire, and monsoon season is approaching. As we share their stories, we are raising money to help build inexpensive bamboo houses for these refugees. (They are currently living in plastic tents.) Bamboo houses can be built for $600 a piece, and we’ve raised enough for over 1000 houses so far, but the need is much more. Please consider donating: http://bit.ly/2H0w5lm

“I was walking home from the paddy fields when I heard the sound...

“I was walking home from the paddy fields when I heard the sound of a bullet. A young boy fell right next to me. Then suddenly there were so many bullets that it seemed like rain. I ran straight to my house and told my family to run. I told them to run deep into the forest and I started grabbing everything I could. I tried to follow them but it was raining too hard. I kept losing my balance because I was carrying our bags. It took me an hour to find them. I was screaming their names like a madman. Finally I discovered tracks in the mud and found my children huddled in the woods, but my wife was not with them. Nobody knew where she was. It was too dangerous to stay so we had to keep moving. We walked for three days without food and water. The children kept asking for their mother, but I didn’t know what to tell them. I thought we had lost her forever. Finally on the fourth day someone told us they’d passed her on the road. They said she was alone and crying. We were starving and didn’t have the energy to go back. But our nephew volunteered to find her, and tell her that we’d meet her in Bangladesh.”

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This week I’m sharing a series of first hand accounts from Rohingya refugees. The Rohingya are a persecuted ethnic minority who have been violently evicted from Myanmar by Buddhist extremists. Over the past year, nearly 700,000 Rohingya have been driven from their homes and are now residing in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Their living conditions are already dire, and monsoon season is approaching. As we share their stories, we are raising money to help build inexpensive bamboo houses for these refugees. (They are currently living in plastic tents.) Bamboo houses can be built for $600 a piece, and we’ve raised enough for over 1000 houses so far, but the need is much more. Please consider donating: http://bit.ly/2H0w5lm

“They came to our house first because it’s closest to the road. ...

“They came to our house first because it’s closest to the road. We thought they just wanted to talk. We thought they’d ask us some questions, and then they’d leave. So we walked out to meet them. I smelled smoke as soon as I walked outside. And they started shooting their guns. There was no time to go back. They were shooting so I couldn’t go back. And I couldn’t bring anything with me. I just ran into the forest with my children. And I forgot my baby boy. I left him in the house because I thought we were coming right back. I wanted to save him but my husband held me down. So my baby burned in the house. I’d have brought him with me, but I thought we were coming right back.”

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This week I’m sharing a series of first hand accounts from Rohingya refugees. The Rohingya are a persecuted ethnic minority who have been violently evicted from Myanmar by Buddhist extremists. Over the past year, nearly 700,000 Rohingya have been driven from their homes and are now residing in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Their living conditions are already dire, and monsoon season is approaching. As we share their stories, we are raising money to help build inexpensive bamboo houses for these refugees. (They are currently living in plastic tents.) Bamboo houses can be built for $600 a piece, and we’ve raised enough for over 1000 houses so far, but the need is much more. Please consider donating: http://bit.ly/2H0w5lm

“I looked out my window and saw smoke coming from the village...

“I looked out my window and saw smoke coming from the village across the river. At first I thought it was a casual fire. But then I heard shooting, and I saw people were trying to swim across the river. We knew that our village would be next. I grabbed what I could carry and ran toward the mountain. We hid in the bushes all day. There were thousands of us on that mountain. Anyone who tried to talk was shushed. We looked down on our village and watched them burn our houses. Before they burned mine, they carried everything out. They took all my furniture. They took two hundred bags of lentils. I’m a schoolteacher, but I owned a lot of farmland. I paid taxes on my land for decades. I have all my paperwork. I have all my receipts. But they took it all from me. I wasn’t able to bring a single grain of rice with me. These papers are all I have. They are worthless now. But my hope is that one day they’ll have value again.”
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This week I’m sharing a series of first hand accounts from Rohingya refugees. The Rohingya are a persecuted ethnic minority who have been violently evicted from Myanmar by Buddhist extremists. Over the past year, nearly 700,000 Rohingya have been driven from their homes and are now residing in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Their living conditions are already dire, and monsoon season is approaching. As we share their stories, we are raising money to help build inexpensive bamboo houses for these refugees. (They are currently living in plastic tents.) Bamboo houses can be built for $600 a piece, and we’ve raised enough for nearly 1000 so far. Please consider donating: http://bit.ly/2H0w5lm

“Nobody was prepared for this. There are now 700,000...

“Nobody was prepared for this. There are now 700,000 people trying to figure out how to survive in the middle of nowhere. A few months ago, this entire area was a national forest reserve. It was covered with trees. But the refugees had nothing when they arrived, so they started cutting the trees for fuel. Then they moved on to shrubs. Now they’ve dug up all the roots so there’s nothing left but loose soil. It’s too dangerous for them to go home so we’re trying to make the best of the situation. Almost all the refugees are living in plastic tents right now. They’re extremely vulnerable. So we’ve designed sturdy bamboo houses and we’re building them as fast as we can. We want to finish as many as possible before the monsoon season arrives.”

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This week I’m sharing a series of first hand accounts from Rohingya refugees. Alongside these stories, we’ll meet a few of the wonderful people who are working to make the situation better. This is Immad– a construction coordinator for the humanitarian organization OBAT Helpers BD. Immad is a hero of our tale because he designed the bamboo houses that we are currently raising money to build. Our campaign has raised over $500,000 so far. That’s enough to build nearly 800 houses. Because each house can hold a family of six, that’s enough to shelter nearly 5,000 people. A pretty remarkable achievement, but there are still nearly a million refugees without homes.

So if you haven’t already, please consider donating here: http://bit.ly/2H0w5lm

“They didn’t say a word. They just started firing into the air...

“They didn’t say a word. They just started firing into the air and lighting our houses on fire. The burning began on the north side of our village, so we fled south into the forest. We walked all night through the dark. I could hear people in the forest all around me. We were too afraid to rest. When the sun began to rise, everyone panicked and started to run. I noticed two children leaning against a tree. Both of them were crying. The boy said nothing. The girl would only tell me that her mother had been killed. When I asked if they wanted to come with me, they nodded ‘yes.’ I’m taking care of them the best I can, but it’s difficult because I already have a large family. I think they are happier now. The girl has made some friends in camp. But she still keeps asking about her mother.”

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This week I’m sharing a series of first hand accounts from Rohingya refugees. The Rohingya are a persecuted ethnic minority who have been violently evicted from Myanmar by Buddhist extremists. Over the past year, nearly 700,000 Rohingya have been driven from their homes and are now residing in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Their living conditions are already dire, and monsoon season is approaching. As we share their stories, we are raising money to help build inexpensive bamboo houses for these refugees. (They are currently living in plastic tents.) Bamboo houses can be built for $600 a piece, and we’ve raised enough for over 400 so far. Please consider donating: http://bit.ly/2H0w5lm

“It’s been happening since our grandparents’ time. We haven’t...

“It’s been happening since our grandparents’ time. We haven’t had a day of peace. Every night the military would knock on our door and demand that we give them sheep or goats. The police would stop us on the way to market and arrest us for no reason. Just for being Muslim. They’d take us to the police station and make us clean the toilets. If you asked ‘why,’ you’d be beaten. On the night they came to burn our village, we barely survived. The bullets came through our walls all night. My brother was shot in the stomach. I thought any moment would be the end. At first light I put my daughter on my shoulder and started to run. There were pieces of people all over the road. Every time I passed a dead body, I would switch her to the other shoulder.”

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This week I’m sharing a series of first hand accounts from Rohingya refugees. The Rohingya are a persecuted ethnic minority who have been violently evicted from Myanmar by Buddhist extremists. Over the past year, nearly 700,000 Rohingya have been driven from their homes and are now residing in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Their living conditions are already dire, and monsoon season is approaching. As we share their stories, we are raising money to help build inexpensive bamboo houses for them. (Almost all the refugees are currently living in plastic tents.) Bamboo houses can be built for $600 a piece, and we’ve raised enough for almost 300 so far.

Please consider donating: http://bit.ly/2H0w5lm

“It was early in the morning when the military came. I woke up...

“It was early in the morning when the military came. I woke up to a big sound that sounded like a bomb blast. Then the shooting started and everyone was screaming. We ran for our lives. It was dark and there were people running all around us. It only took us thirty minutes to get to safety because our village is close to the border. But then some of us decided to go back. There were five of us. We were curious. We wanted to see what happened to the others. We crawled on our stomachs to the top of a hill, and looked down at our village. There were so many dead bodies. Some of them were my cousins. I saw a girl from school with three soldiers kneeling on top of her. They were covering her mouth so she wouldn’t scream. I felt so dizzy. I couldn’t stand up. I used to have a dream that I was going to grow up and help my family. I was studying hard. Now I don’t even know why I’d want to live in this world.”

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This week I’m sharing a series of first hand accounts from Rohingya refugees. The Rohingya are a persecuted ethnic minority who have been violently evicted from Myanmar by Buddhist extremists. Over the past year, nearly 700,000 Rohingya have been driven from their homes and are now residing in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Their living conditions are already dire, and monsoon season is approaching. As we share their stories, we are raising money to help build inexpensive bamboo houses for these refugees. We’ve raised enough for 30 houses so far. Please consider donating: http://bit.ly/2H0w5lm

During my recent trip to Bangladesh, I spent several days...

During my recent trip to Bangladesh, I spent several days outside of Cox’s Bazaar, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees have settled into camps. I’ll be sharing some of their stories over the next week. The situation is quite dire and many of the stories will be tough to read. But during this time, we’ll be having a fundraiser to impact the lives of refugees in a direct way—by building sturdy homes before the monsoon season arrives. I’ll be explaining more about the fundraiser throughout the series, but you can find it here: http://bit.ly/2H0w5lm

One limitation of social media is that you’re forced to share information in small bursts, which can make it difficult to convey context. This is especially unfortunate when dealing with something as complex as the Rohingya refugee crisis. So for anyone interested in the bigger picture, I’d recommend this recent series in The Globe and Mail by photojournalist Renaud Phillipe: https://tgam.ca/2FlRmbO

Hopefully as we spend the next week learning the stories of these refugees, we can also play a small part in softening their hardships.

“I was tired of renting a room. It was so much pressure. Every...

“I was tired of renting a room. It was so much pressure. Every month would pass by so quickly and the landlord would be knocking on my door again. If I didn’t have the money, he would knock every day. I couldn’t take the stress. I just wanted a place where I could relax. So I saved for two years to buy a house in the slum. It wasn’t a legal house because it was built on government land, but it was all I could afford. I tried to make it nice. I gathered scrap wood and created an extra room. I built my own bathroom. I slept so well there. Nothing was burdening me. Then one day I got a letter on my door. Everyone in our slum got the same letter. It said we needed to leave because the government was planning to build a road on the land. Armed guards came the next morning and bulldozed all our houses. That was three years ago. They still haven’t built the road.”

(Jakarta, Indonesia)