A Kiwi Flies The Coop

Kelsey-rae Taylor (28) Is the Senior Media & Communications Adviser at Oxfam New Zealand

- Cloe Willetts

“When I first drove into the Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, it was like a town sprung out of the hills, with a labyrinth of makeshift tents practically lined on top of each other.

In the tarpaulin and bamboo shelters were families of multiple generations – mothers, grandparents, children and aunts − who were all pushed out of their homes in Myanmar by war and persecution.

Before the violence the Rohingya people, an ethnic minority mostly from Rakhine on Myanmar’s western coast, had normal lives, proper houses and jobs. They were happy, self-sufficient people until a campaign of widespread and systematic murder, rape and burning overtook their homeland. The Rohingya have long been discriminated against in Myanmar, denied citizenship and basic rights such as being able to travel, work, see a doctor and own land.

To get to the world’s biggest refugee camp, Kutupalong, they’d escaped and walked for days and nights, through rivers and over steep hills, with scarce supplies and traumatic personal stories. They’ve been through things most New Zealanders would never even come close to experiencing.