Alam's short life ended on Saturday in a dark, tattered tent in Bangladesh, the Rohingya child's skeletal body succumbing to illness contracted while fleeing Myanmar where his stateless people are under attack. He was six-months-old. Alam died hours after arriving at a makeshift refugee camp close to Teknaf, the gateway to Cox's Bazar, a poor, densely populated coastal area already home to more than 230,000 Rohingya refugees.
But for the Rohingya, Bangladesh is far from a promised land. So far little or no aid has been provided for the new arrivals, with Bangladeshi authorities fearing food, medicine and shelter will encourage more to cross the border. With her child's emaciated body by her side, 22-year-old Nur Begum describes how a Myanmar army raid that killed her husband and two other children forced her to flee Rakhine State for Bangladesh with the tiny Alam.
After three-week trip with little food, Begum and her increasingly sick child made it to the camp in Leda, across the Bangladeshi border. But Alam's journey was at an end. "I finally had some food in the camp and thought I would be able to feed him," his distraught mother told AFP.