Ontario Couple Working this Christmas Season with Rohingya Refugees

Harry and Greta Harsevoort, of Hamilton, Ont., are working with Rohingya refugees who are suffering displacement, hunger and disease on an epic scale this Christmas season.

The refugees have been on the run, like Joseph, Mary and Jesus who had to flee Herod’s wrath in Bethlehem and make their way to safety in Egypt (Matthew 2:13-23).

The Rohingyas have been escaping for their lives by the hundreds of thousands into the Kutupalong refugee camp, located in an area of Bangladesh that was home to only a few thousand people earlier this year. But that number has recently swelled to nearly 600,000, making it one of the largest such camps in the world.

It is in the Kutupalong camp that the Harsevoorts have been working with World Renew to distribute food to refugees, many under the age of 18.

“As we pass through the camp, we see a seemingly endless expanse of makeshift shelters in every direction,” said Greta Harsevoort in a newsletter she sent to World Renew.

They see an area, once filled with greenery, now packed with bamboo and multi-colored, one-room tarp homes. They also see malnourished families, people suffering from wounds, teachers trying to teach students under tarps, and latrines and water sources that are breeding grounds for disease.

“There are fears that the camps are on the brink of an epidemic disease outbreak.The results would be catastrophic,” said Greta.

Working as international relief managers since 2011, she and her husband have also been part of World Renew’s response to disasters in Africa, the Philippines, and Nepal.

Arriving in Bangladesh in November, the Harsevoorts quickly connected with the World Food Program (WFP), the food-distribution agency of the United Nations that is organizing bimonthly general food distribution to the camps for the Rohingyas.

Soon after that meeting, World Renew received approval to be one of the organizations, with help from its partners, to distribute food.

“We provide lentils, cooking oil, sugar, and salt to complement the rice provided by WFP at assigned distribution centers,” said Greta.

A History of the Conflict

The Myanmar regime, which is Buddhist, has never recognized the Rohingyas who are Muslims as citizens. Relegated to Rakhine state in the north, the Rohingyas and the government  more or less coexisted until about 2011 when ethnic tensions erupted and the government began displacing Rohingyas, calling them aliens and terrorists and prompting many to flee as refugees.

A mass exodus occurred in which thousands of Rohingyas tried to escape to Indonesia or Thailand by the Andaman Sea and drowned, or to escape cross country and were killed or put in jail and tortured.

Then, following a series of small-scale conflicts, a major conflict began in August 2017 when a group of Rohingya militants attacked government forces.

In response, Myanmar soldiers, supported by Buddhist militias, began a bloody purge, trying to rid the area of Rohingya families — whether innocent or guilty — in any way possible.

For instance, Rohingya refugees told a Huffington Postreporter that soldiers would fly over villages, shooting at them from helicopters. Then, touching down, they rounded up villagers, raped the women and burned the homes — sometimes with families in them.

Looking  Ahead

Story after story of the violence this has come out as refugees have escaped in wooden carts, carrying children on their backs, dealing with animals in the jungle, and being swept away in the Naj River as they tried to cross from Myanmar to Bangladesh. Reports are that about 6,700 Rohingyas have been killed since the conflict began in August.

“Sixty percent of women arriving have been raped by the military,” said Grace Wiebe, a senior program manager for World Renew who has visited the camps, in a blog.

Besides the Kutupalong camp, there are two others in the area known as Cox Bazar.

Safiri, a Rohingya mother of six girls and six boys, told Wiebe she decided to flee her home before dusk one day, fearing she would be raped when the army showed up that night.

“The trauma is so enormous that some can’t speak about it. Husbands have been blindfolded and beaten, tortured, beheaded, or shot,” said Wiebe in the blog.

Ken Kim, World Renew’s director of disaster response and rehabilitation, said in a Q&A on the Canadian Foodgrains Bank website that helping the Rohingya refugees is difficult and will remain that way. 

“Everyone knows someone who was killed or did not make it out alive. Most fled with nothing, or very little. Most are willing to go back if it is safe for them to do so,” he said.

Over a period of about three months, in the first phase of its response in Bangladesh, World Renew, in partnership with members of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank and the Integral Alliance, and the Christian Commission for Development in Bangladesh, responded quickly by providing life-saving food assistance to more than 250,000 Rohingyas.

Now that the initial phase of providing emergency food and supplies is more or less complete, World Renew has people on staff in Bangladesh who are looking ahead to responding to the many needs, including the trauma people have experienced.

As the planning goes on, Kim says the faces and stories of people he met in the camps stay with him. Despite their circumstances, many had hope. Yet, they are suffering a great deal, squeezed together by the hundreds of thousands in the makeshift huts, looking ahead to the coming rainy season when they will be swamped by mud and water, and wondering if they can ever return to their homes.

Especially at this time of year, Kim said, “it’s important to recall that Jesus spent his early years as a refugee in a foreign land, along with his parents Mary and Joseph. The Bible is filled with accounts of landless people, wandering from place to place in search of a safe place to live.”