November 20, 2017
ASIA / PACIFIC
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 3
Myanmar boy can’t swim but floats on oil drum to Bangladesh
DESPERATE MEASURES. Rohingya Muslim Nabi Hussain, 13,
poses for a portrait with the yellow plastic drum he used as a flotation
device while crossing the Naf River in Shah Porir Dwip, south Cox’s
Bazar, Bangladesh. The Naf River is a natural border between Myanmar
and Bangladesh. Nabi couldn’t swim, and had never even seen the sea
before fleeing his village in Myanmar. But he clung to the empty drum
and struggled across the water with it for about 2.5 miles, all the way
to Bangladesh. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
By Bernat Armangue
The Associated Press
S
HAH PORIR DWIP, Bangladesh — Nabi Hussain
owes his life to a yellow plastic oil drum.
The 13-year-old Rohingya boy couldn’t swim, and
had never even seen the sea before fleeing his village in
Myanmar. But he clung to the empty drum and struggled
across the water with it for about 2.5 miles, all the way to
Bangladesh.
Rohingya Muslims escaping the violence in their
homeland of Myanmar are now so desperate that some are
trying to swim to safety in neighboring Bangladesh. In the
span of just a week, more than three dozen boys and young
men used cooking oil drums like life rafts to swim across
the mouth of the Naf River and wash up ashore in Shah
Porir Dwip, a fishing town and cattle trade spot.
“I was so scared of dying,” said Nabi, a lanky boy in a
striped polo shirt and checkered dhoti. “I thought it was
going to be my last day.”
Although Rohingya Muslims have lived in Myanmar for
decades, the country’s Buddhist majority still sees them
as invaders from Bangladesh. The government denies
them basic rights, and the United Nations has called them
the most persecuted minority in the world. Just since
August, after their homes were torched by Buddhist mobs
and soldiers, more than 600,000 Rohingya have risked the
trip to Bangladesh.
“We had a lot of suffering, so we thought drowning in the
water was a better option,” said Kamal Hussain, 18, who
also swam to Bangladesh using an oil drum.
Nabi knows almost no one in this new country, and his
parents back in Myanmar don’t know he is alive. He
doesn’t smile and rarely maintains eye contact.
Nabi grew up in the mountains of Myanmar, the fourth
of nine children of a farmer who grows paan, the betel leaf
used as chewing tobacco. He never went to school.
The trouble started two months ago when Rohingya
insurgents attacked Myanmar security forces. The
Myanmar military responded with a brutal crackdown,
killing men, raping women, and burning homes and
property. The last Nabi saw of his village, all the homes
were on fire.
Nabi’s family fled, heading toward the coast, passing
dead bodies. But when they arrived at the coast with a
flood of other Rohingya refugees, they had no money for a
boat and a smuggler.
Every day, there was less food. So after four days, Nabi
told his parents he wanted to swim the delta to reach the
thin line of land he could see in the distance — Shah Porir
Dwip.
His parents didn’t want him to go. One of his older
Hospital says North Korean soldier’s condition stabilizing
By Kim Tong-Hyung
The Associated Press
S
EOUL, South Korea — The condition of a North
Korean soldier severely wounded by gunfire while
escaping to South Korea is gradually improving
after two surgeries, but it’s too early to tell whether he will
make a recovery, hospital officials said.
While the soldier’s vital signs are stabilizing, he
continues to remain unconscious, relying on a breathing
machine. After consecutive surgeries to repair damage to
internal organs and other injuries, no further surgeries
were currently planned, said Shin Mi-jeong, an official at
the Ajou University Medical Center near Seoul.
The unarmed soldier, whose name and rank have not
been disclosed, defected to the South by driving a military
jeep near a line that divides the Koreas at the Joint
Security Area (JSA) and then rushing across it under a
barrage of bullets.
While treating the wounds, surgeons removed dozens of
parasites from the soldier’s ruptured small intestine,
including presumed roundworms that were as long as 10.6
inches, which may be reflective of poor nutrition and
health in North Korea’s military. Doctors measured the
soldier as 5’6” feet tall and 132 pounds.
“I [have] more than 20 years of experience as a surgeon,
but I have not found parasites this big in the intestines of
South Koreans,” Lee Cook-jong, who leads the soldier’s
medical team, told reporters.
Lee is a famous trauma specialist who was hailed as a
hero in 2011 after conducting life-saving surgeries on the
captain of a South Korean freighter ship who was shot
during a rescue mission after being held by Somali
pirates.
South Korea’s military said four North Korean soldiers
used handguns and AK rifles to fire about 40 rounds at
their former comrade, who was hit at least five times. He
was found beneath a pile of leaves on the southern side of
the JSA, and South Korean troops crawled there to
recover him. A United Nations Command helicopter later
transported him to the Ajou hospital.
It remains unclear whether the North Koreans chasing
the soldier fired at him even after he crossed into the
southern side of the border, which would be a violation of
an armistice agreement that ended the 1950-1953 Korean
War. The U.N. Command, which is investigating the
incident, postponed a plan to release video footage of the
soldier’s escape.
The JSA is jointly overseen by the American-led U.N.
Command and by North Korea, with South Korean and
North Korean border guards facing each other only feet
apart. It is located inside the two-and-a-half-mile-wide
Demilitarized Zone, which has formed the de facto border
between the Koreas since the Korean War.
brothers had left for Bangladesh two months ago, and
they had no idea what had happened to him. They knew
the strong currents could carry Nabi into the ocean.
Eventually, though, they agreed, on the condition that
he not go alone. So on the afternoon of November 3, Nabi
joined a group of 23 other young men, and his family came
to see him off.
“Please keep me in your prayers,” he told his mother,
while everyone around him wept.
Nabi and the others strapped the cooking oil drums to
their chests as floats, and stepped into the water just as
the current started to shift toward Bangladesh. The men
stayed in groups of three, tied together with ropes. Nabi
was in the middle, because he was young and didn’t know
how to swim.
Nabi remembers swallowing water, in part because of
the waves and in part to quench his thirst. The water was
salty. His legs ached. But he never looked behind him.
Just after sundown, the group reached Shah Porir
Dwip, exhausted, hungry, and dehydrated.
Nabi is now alone, one of an estimated 40,000
unaccompanied Rohingya Muslim children living in
Bangladesh. He looks down as he speaks, just a few feet
from the water, and murmurs his biggest wish: “I want my
parents and peace.”
Late afternoon on the next day, authorities spotted a
few dots in the middle of the water. It was another group of
Rohingya swimming to Bangladesh with yellow drums.
They arrived at the same time as a pack of cattle — except
that the cows came by boat.
Bernat Armangue is the South Asia news director
for The Associated Press, based in New Delhi.
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