Reaching out to rescue a Rohingya woman
Perspective by
Story
Hannah McKay was on her first foreign assignment, just three months after joining Reuters, photographing Rohingya Muslims in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Then she and other photographers heard around 5,000 more people were heading to the area, trying to find their way across the border from neighbouring Myanmar. Here is her account of what happened next:
"We were standing, looking out over paddy fields and grasslands – lots of water and one thin path leading to the border with Myanmar.
"In the distance we could see a huge group of people. But they weren’t moving. It was 4 o’clock in the afternoon with only two hours left of daylight. So we decided to move towards them.
"It took us about an hour along the muddy path, meeting border guards and persuading them to let us pass. Then we saw thousands of refugees just sitting there, with more Bangladeshi border guards telling us to go back.
"We could see something was going on behind the crowd. So we waited for an opportunity to move closer, and that’s when we saw them.
"The crowd was sitting on a riverbank and behind them, about three metres below, in the river itself, there were just hundreds of refugees coming across every minute. It was non-stop. There was no end to the people. People carrying babies. Elderly people being escorted through the water and mud, more than knee-deep. And we were just photographing everyone coming towards us.
