Horrific image emerges of dead Rohingya Muslim baby

Horrific image emerges of dead Rohingya Muslim baby



A heartbreaking photo has emerged of a Rohingya Muslim mother desperately clutching her dead baby after the boat they were travelling to escape from Myanmar capsized as the family was fleeing to Bangladesh.



The image bears a tragic resemblance to the lifeless body of Aylan Kurdi, a young Syrian refugee who washed up dead on a Turkish beach in September 2015.

The desperately sad photo of the dead Rohingya baby boy, only 40 days old, was taken in south-eastern Bangladesh by photographer Dar Yasin.

He describes walking on the beach near the town of Cox's Bazar when he noticed 'some sort of commotion'.



 'A boat had capsized. Some women were unconscious. One woman was crying, as a family member had drowned; three more were in precarious condition and I was unsure if they would make it. Another woman was consoling her,' Yasin told Time.



'And then suddenly, the woman who was consoling the crying woman started wailing herself. Her husband had come over with Abdul Masood, one of their twin sons, who was dead. She held one child who was alive and one who wasn't breathing. It was heartbreaking.'



Yasin said the boat the refugees were travelling in - containing 45 members of the same family - capsized only a few meters from the shore. But it was too far away to save Hanida Begum's child.

The refugees are among hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who have fled Burma to escape persecution at the hands of the predominately Buddhist government.

Myanmar leader and Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has received criticism from across the world  for her failure strongly to speak out about their plight. 



 The refugees - who have been described as some of the most persecuted people in the world  - are living in pitiable conditions in squalid camps in south-eastern Bangladesh.

Their misery has been compounded recently by strong monsoon rains which have flooded their flimsy shelters made only out of bamboo and plastic sheets.



People in the camps were left in a mudbath on Wednesday as they desperately packed their meagre belongings into plastic sacks in a desperate quest to find drier shelters.

Their numbers have soared to more than 420,000 in a matter of weeks.

The refugees also have to contend with enforced relocations at the hands of the Bangladesh authorities and extortion demands if they try to remain where they are.



The death of three-year-old Syrian boy Alan Kurdi made global headlines in September 2015 when he drowned while he and his family were trying to reach Europe along with thousands of other refugees.

Photographs of his body quickly spread around the world and became the defining image of the horror of the Middle East refugee crisis.