Unlike the 2019 peace rally at Kutupalong Mega camp, when over 200,000 Rohingya refugees converged together to mark the second anniversary of their exodus from Rakhine state, the third anniversary on 25th August 2020 was commemorated by 900,000 Rohingya refugees living in the 34 camps at Cox’s Bazar, in a rather quiet and prayerful manner. The 25th August has been commemorated as ‘Rohingya Genocide Remembrance Day’ by the Roghingya communities all over the world, ever since the August 2017 brutal military crackdown on Rohingya civilians. The fleeing survivors and the eye witnesses narrated scores of stories of untold atrocities such as infants being snatched and tossed into burning flames, hundreds of girls and women sexually brutalized and done to death often in the presence of their loved ones, countless Rohingya boys and men hunted down and shot dead by the Myanmar military and Rakhine ethnic mobs. The Rohingya rightly remember them all as their martyrs.
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The author is currently assigned to work with JRS team members for Rohingya refugees at JRS ministry Bangladesh
