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The Invisible Crisis of the Rohingya Mind

  • Writer: David Palazón
    David Palazón
  • 3 days ago
  • 20 min read

This report documents the psychological landscape of the Rohingya refugee population in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. It integrates documentary photography, clinical data, and community-led survey results from February 2026. The findings illustrate a shift from historical trauma to a state of chronic "futurelessness" defined by legal invisibility and physical confinement.


By Ahtaram Shin and Maung Emdadul Hasan. Edited by David Palazón. Photography by:


A Mind in Exile


The refugee settlements of Cox’s Bazar represent more than a humanitarian emergency; they constitute a profound psychological landscape where trauma is a continuous, active state of being rather than a post phenomenon. For the 1.1 million Rohingya residents, the psychological reality is defined by a mind in exile, where the memories of the 2017 genocide in Myanmar are daily reinforced by the structural violence of encampment.


This condition is framed by what the scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak identifies as 'epistemic violence', the systematic process by which Western intellectual and humanitarian institutions construct the marginalized "Other" as a monolithic object of study. In this context, the humanitarian media complex often packages Rohingya lives into flattened statistics of victimhood to secure donor funding, effectively maintaining the West as the central "Subject" of history while obliterating the precarious subjectivity of the displaced.


This epistemic violence manifests through the packaging of the refugee voice. When Rohingya are granted platforms in humanitarian media, their narratives are frequently filtered, translated, and curated to fit the acceptable archetype of the grateful or traumatized victim, rather than being recognized as complex political actors with heterogeneous identities. This erasure of internal stratification, ignoring diverse class backgrounds, political opinions, and social complexities, homogenizes nearly one million people into a singular narrative of universal suffering.


The foundational trauma of the community stems from the 2017 genocidal clearance operations in Myanmar. Quantitative data indicates that 98.6% of refugees were exposed to frequent gunfire, 97.8% witnessed the burning of their villages, and 91.8% witnessed dead bodies. For the Rohingya, the struggle is not merely against physical confinement but against the ongoing erasure of these histories. The "mind in exile" must navigate a reality where historical atrocities are constantly refreshed by present-day insecurity, creating a psychological state where the past and present are indistinguishable.


Sunrise over the refugee camps of Cox’s Bazar. More than one million Rohingya refugees live in settlements spread across the hills near Cox's Bazar. 2025 © Ayub Khan Dkl
Sunrise over the refugee camps of Cox’s Bazar. More than one million Rohingya refugees live in settlements spread across the hills near Cox's Bazar. 2025 © Ayub Khan Dkl

The inability to project a future or claim a recognised identity beyond the label of 'statelessnes' serves as a continuous traumatic stressor. Following the enactment of the 1982 Citizenship Law in Myanmar, the Rohingya were stripped of their citizenship, rendering them legally invisible. In Bangladesh, they are classified as 'Forcibly Displaced Myanmar Nationals' (FDMN), a term that denies them official refugee status and blocks access to formal employment or higher education. This legal invisibility drives an identity crisis reported by 73% of survey respondents.



Geography of the Mind-Soul


To understand the mental health crisis in the camps, one must first engage with the specific cultural vocabulary the Rohingya use to describe their suffering. The Western biomedical model frequently fails to capture the nuances of refugee distress because it relies on a binary of mental versus physical health. In contrast, the Rohingya utilize a tripartite model of the self: the brain (mogos/demag), the mind-soul (dil/mon and jaan/foran), and the physical body (jism/gaa).



In this framework, cognitive functions reside in the brain, while emotions and spiritual affect originate in the mind-soul. These are not separate compartments but an interconnected super-system. When the mind-soul lacks peace, the body inevitably manifests pain.


The following terms represent the primary terms of distress used by the community to navigate a reality of continuous trauma.


  • Lack of Peace (Oshanti): The most prevalent expression of distress, describing a state of total restlessness. In community surveys, 43% of respondents reported feeling oshanti most of the time.

  • Wounds of the Mind (Dili-zokhom): This term describes trauma not as a past event, but as an active, open wound that remains sensitive to the ongoing stressors of camp life.

  • Strong Worry (Dilor sin-ta) and Fear (Dorr): These describe the hyper-vigilance required for survival; 47% of refugees report feeling this almost every day.

  • Body Pain (Gaa bish lager) and Burning (Gaa zoler): Somatic expressions of mental tension where the body carries what the mind can no longer process.


By prioritising this lexicon, the Rohingya collective asserts they are primary authors of their own psychological experience. Clinical interventions that override these local categories risk further 'epistemic violence' by silencing the community's own understanding of its wounds. This language proves that for the refugee, the mental and the physical are a single, unified landscape of endurance.


In this landscape, the creative pursuit of peace (shanti) acts as a vital, active counterweight to the pervasive experience of distress (oshanti) . Rather than remaining passive victims of psychological erosion, individuals function as active architects of their own internal tranquility. Md Selim, a musician from Nappura in Myanmar, exemplifies this 'refugee of the mind' through his construction of Shanti kana (Peace House), a sanctuary within his shelter featuring hand-moulded floral reliefs and plastered walls.


For Md Selim, this sanctuary serves as a vital tool for regulating the stress of long-term exile. In a landscape of legal invisibility, his art and music function as "food for the heart," preserving his dignity and providing the spiritual meaning necessary to endure a "paused" life. 2019 © David Palazón.
For Md Selim, this sanctuary serves as a vital tool for regulating the stress of long-term exile. In a landscape of legal invisibility, his art and music function as "food for the heart," preserving his dignity and providing the spiritual meaning necessary to endure a "paused" life. 2019 © David Palazón.
"Music is knowledge", says Md Selim. "It keeps us pure and honest. It’s like food for your heart. If you love your music, music will love you back."

Veteran violinist Amir Ali (82), who began his training at age ten and mastered his craft under the renowned Bodi Alam, performs alongside Md Selim. Ali brings a lifetime of musical heritage into the displacement setting. 2019 © David Palazón
Veteran violinist Amir Ali (82), who began his training at age ten and mastered his craft under the renowned Bodi Alam, performs alongside Md Selim. Ali brings a lifetime of musical heritage into the displacement setting. 2019 © David Palazón

Reading the Collective Mind


This community-led survey serves as the empirical foundation for understanding the Rohingya emotional landscape within the camps. While clinical reports often emphasise the historical atrocities of 2017, this community-led research reveals that the current psychological crisis is driven primarily by present-day stagnation, a loss of agency, and a profound sense of 'futurelessness'.


The research was designed and conducted by members of our collective to quantify a lived reality often overlooked by top-down humanitarian metrics. Although the scope of this community-led study is focused, its findings are no less significant, as they provide a primary evidence base from within the settlements. The research involved a targeted sample of 247 community members across the Cox's Bazar settlements, consisting of 56.7% men and 43.3% women. Notably, 55.5% of respondents were aged 18–35, representing the youth population most acutely affected by the systemic suspension of education and formal employment. Quantitative data was collected through standardised surveys and then supplemented by 40 in-depth qualitative comments, a methodology intended to capture personal testimonies of suffering alongside the broader statistical trends of the Rohingya experience.


Indicator

High Frequency / Severity

Moderate / Sometimes

Low Frequency / No

Lack of Peace / Sadness

43.3% (Often)

46.6%

10.1%

Fear and Strong Worry

47.4% (Daily)

47.0%

5.7%

Anger over Restrictions

48.2% (Always)

34.0%

17.8%

Outlook on the Future

25.1% (Very Hopeless)

48.6% (Moderate)

26.3% (Hopeful)

Control over Life Decisions

29.1% (No Control)

43.7% (Little)

27.1% (Full)

Unexplained Body Pain

31.2% (Often)

52.6%

16.2%

Constant Alertness

31.2% (Always)

51.8%

17.0%


Qualitative feedback from the survey reinforces the theme of structural hopelessness, a state where despair is fuelled by current confinement rather than past memory. Respondents frequently described life within the camp as living in a jail due to the presence of barbed wire, checkpoints, and the total prohibition on movement and formal income. One respondent noted that their generation is disappearing and their talents are being wasted because they are denied freedom, protection, and opportunity.


This loss of agency serves as a primary catalyst for psychological distress. The survey clarifies that the most pressing stressors are current structural failures rather than historical events. Stagnation through the lack of work or education is cited by 38.9% of the community as the hardest part of life, a figure that surpasses the 32.8% who identify memories of Myanmar as their primary stressor. Furthermore, food insecurity is identified by 35.6% of respondents as a dominant chronic stressor, a situation significantly exacerbated by recent ration cuts.


By documenting these metrics, the collective provides an evidence-based counter-narrative to the assumption that refugee suffering is purely a post-genocide issue. Instead, the data reveals a community whose mental health is being systematically eroded by a life that feels paused, where depending on daily aid creates a sense of powerlessness and undermines mental peace.
By documenting these metrics, the collective provides an evidence-based counter-narrative to the assumption that refugee suffering is purely a post-genocide issue. Instead, the data reveals a community whose mental health is being systematically eroded by a life that feels paused, where depending on daily aid creates a sense of powerlessness and undermines mental peace.

The Architecture of Despair


The psychological distress within the settlements is inextricably tied to the structural violence of the physical surroundings. While individual trauma is often analysed through a clinical lens, the collective mental state is a direct response to an inescapable architecture of despair, a legal and physical landscape that converts historical memory into chronic, present-day anxiety. Within this framework, the camp environment acts as a biological modifier, where spatial confinement and environmental hazards actively reshape the internal biology of the residents.


The refugee settlements in Cox’s Bazar constitute the most densely populated environment of their kind on earth. This extreme density is more than a logistical challenge; it is a physiological stressor that actively reshapes the biology of the residents. When a person perceives their environment as inescapably hostile, the body’s internal alarm system—the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis—remains permanently activated.


In a healthy person, this axis releases cortisol (a stress hormone) to help them deal with a temporary threat. But for the Rohingya, this system is flooded with cortisol every single day. This chronic activation is biologically toxic. Like an engine running at high speed for too long, it eventually weakens the immune system and changes how the brain is wired, a process known as altering neurobiology.


Blocked drains and accumulated waste create hazardous pathways. Overflowing wastewater and garbage restrict movement, particularly for children and elderly residents, while increasing the risk of disease. 2026 © Reyes Islam.
Blocked drains and accumulated waste create hazardous pathways. Overflowing wastewater and garbage restrict movement, particularly for children and elderly residents, while increasing the risk of disease. 2026 © Reyes Islam.

Living in conditions of constant environmental degradation and seasonal instability serves as a persistent trigger for oshanti, or a profound lack of peace. The physical effort required to navigate a volatile, flooded landscape manifests in the body as gaa bish lager (chronic body pain), which are the somatic signatures of a nervous system that cannot find safety. These environmental stressors ensure the social organism remains in a state of perpetual fear, or dorr, as the HPA axis is repeatedly triggered by the sight of encroaching water.


A boy walks through floodwaters carrying belongings during the monsoon season. Each year heavy rains cause landslides and flooding that destroy shelters and displace families again. 2025 © Ayub Khan.
A boy walks through floodwaters carrying belongings during the monsoon season. Each year heavy rains cause landslides and flooding that destroy shelters and displace families again. 2025 © Ayub Khan.
People help each other to cross a stream in Balukhali. Normally the stream is dry but monsoon rains flooded it completely in 2021. © Ro Yassin Abdumonab.
People help each other to cross a stream in Balukhali. Normally the stream is dry but monsoon rains flooded it completely in 2021. © Ro Yassin Abdumonab.
Panoramic view of the Modur Chora river overflowing during the monsoon season. July 2021 © Sahat Zia Hero.
Panoramic view of the Modur Chora river overflowing during the monsoon season. July 2021 © Sahat Zia Hero.

In the camps, the trauma is not just what happened in the past; it is the fact that the survivor’s body still believes it is happening today because the environment remains volatile. The loss of shelter to fire is not an isolated accident but a recurring cycle that maintains the internal wound of trauma. For the refugee, fire revives the physiological disruption left behind by catastrophic experiences, converting historical trauma into a daily, flammable reality. This cycle triggers dilor furani (a burning of the heart) and sethon-goridon (constant hyper-alertness), a state where the body remains in high alert because the environment is perceived as a jail with no escape.


Flames ravage the Cox Bazar refugee camp in Bangladesh on 5 March 2023, leaving 15,000 Rohingyas homeless and destroying 2,800 shelters, along with mosques, schools, and health centres. 2023 © Ro Yassin Abdumonab.
Flames ravage the Cox Bazar refugee camp in Bangladesh on 5 March 2023, leaving 15,000 Rohingyas homeless and destroying 2,800 shelters, along with mosques, schools, and health centres. 2023 © Ro Yassin Abdumonab.
A man throws water over a line of burning bamboo and tarpaulin shelters in Camp 11, Cox’s Bazar, on 5 March 2023. The fire destroyed around 2,800 shelters and displaced more than 15,000 Rohingya refugees, leaving families standing beside the remains of the structures they had built from bamboo, rope, and plastic sheeting. 2023 © Sahat Zia Hero.
A man throws water over a line of burning bamboo and tarpaulin shelters in Camp 11, Cox’s Bazar, on 5 March 2023. The fire destroyed around 2,800 shelters and displaced more than 15,000 Rohingya refugees, leaving families standing beside the remains of the structures they had built from bamboo, rope, and plastic sheeting. 2023 © Sahat Zia Hero.
Zaudha was 40 years old when this photograph was taken. Like so many other Rohingya refugees, she will forever remember March 22, 2021 as the day the devastating ‘Great Fire’ broke out in the camps. She cried and shouted loudly: ‘Our lives have burnt!’. 2021 © Sahat Zia Hero.
Zaudha was 40 years old when this photograph was taken. Like so many other Rohingya refugees, she will forever remember March 22, 2021 as the day the devastating ‘Great Fire’ broke out in the camps. She cried and shouted loudly: ‘Our lives have burnt!’. 2021 © Sahat Zia Hero.
The remains of shelters destroyed during a fire in Camp 9 in 2021. For many Rohingya refugees who have already escaped violence and persecution, the fire felt like another form of suffering. 2021 © Sadek Husein.
The remains of shelters destroyed during a fire in Camp 9 in 2021. For many Rohingya refugees who have already escaped violence and persecution, the fire felt like another form of suffering. 2021 © Sadek Husein.
Boy drinks water in a post fire landscape. 2026 © Mohammed Ederis.
Boy drinks water in a post fire landscape. 2026 © Mohammed Ederis.

Childhood Interrupted


Over 55% of the refugee population in the Cox’s Bazar settlements are children under the age of 18, many of whom have inherited statelessness at birth within the camp parameters. These children exist in a state of suspended development; the structural ban on formal education and professional certification means they cannot progress through standardised schooling or project a life beyond the barbed wire. Parents frequently grieve the loss of future potential, noting that the talents of their children are being wasted due to a lack of freedom and opportunity.


For these children, the crisis reached a biological threshold following severe international funding shortfalls in 2025 and 2026. The World Food Programme was forced to implement a targeting and prioritisation exercise that tiers human beings based on their level of hunger, with food rations slashed to between $7 and $12 per person per month. This is more than a logistical failure; it is a biological threat to the next generation. Global Acute Malnutrition in the camps has risen to 15.1%, surpassing the World Health Organization emergency threshold. In this environment of slow death, malnutrition and chronic stress work together to impair cognitive functions like memory and attention. When the drive for eudaimonia—the ability to pursue meaningful goals—is blocked by jail-like confinement, the resulting stress becomes biologically toxic.


Rohingya refugee children trapped in modern forms of imprisonment, growing up behind fences and restrictions in the refugee camps of Cox’s Bazar, where childhood is confined by displacement, control and uncertainty. 2026 © Ayub Khan.
Rohingya refugee children trapped in modern forms of imprisonment, growing up behind fences and restrictions in the refugee camps of Cox’s Bazar, where childhood is confined by displacement, control and uncertainty. 2026 © Ayub Khan.

For children in the camps, art often becomes a necessary medium to externalise memories that words cannot reach. Visual expression engages emotional pathways in the brain, allowing for the processing of fragmented traumatic memories within the restricted space of a camp classroom.


 "He survived the conflict, but the memories survived with him. His drawings are not dreams, they are echoes of pain. While others draw happiness, Omair draws what he cannot forget." says Ajida. 2026 © Ajida.
 "He survived the conflict, but the memories survived with him. His drawings are not dreams, they are echoes of pain. While others draw happiness, Omair draws what he cannot forget." says Ajida. 2026 © Ajida.

For children like Omair, art is a tool to move traumatic internal wounds into a physical medium. By externalising these images, the nervous system can begin to process the physiological disruption left behind by catastrophic experiences.


The physical and psychological toll on the youth is exemplified by those whose bodies have been directly mapped by war. Trauma here is an active, ongoing disruption of the human super-system, enforced by a legal and physical vacuum.


Drawing by Asom Khan, 10 years old. 2019 © David Palazón.
Drawing by Asom Khan, 10 years old. 2019 © David Palazón.

Mohammed Ali, 11, a survivor of the 2024 drone strike in Maungdaw, now living in Kutupalong. 2026 © Maung Emdadul Hasan.
Mohammed Ali, 11, a survivor of the 2024 drone strike in Maungdaw, now living in Kutupalong. 2026 © Maung Emdadul Hasan.

Once a vibrant child in the village of Horitalah, 11-year-old Mohammed Ali is now a survivor of a 2024 drone strike in Maungdaw township. While surgeons saved his legs, the blast left deep, permanent physical scars and shattered his physical autonomy. His mind remains anchored to the moment the sky broke. While he once dreamed of becoming a teacher, he now watches other children walk to learning centres while he remains largely confined to his shelter, his system locked in a state of permanent hyper-vigilance.


Permanent maps of violence: the physical scars marking the legs of 11-year-old Mohammed Ali. 2026 © Maung Emdadul Hasan.
Permanent maps of violence: the physical scars marking the legs of 11-year-old Mohammed Ali. 2026 © Maung Emdadul Hasan.
"Mohammed describes himself as 'only half alive', a haunting reflection of how extreme violence strips away the human right to feel safe, whole, and hopeful," his father explained.

Sumaiya, 11, stands silently in the crowded queue in the refugee camp. Her young eyes holding sadness far heavier than her years. 2026 © Ro Harez Khan.
Sumaiya, 11, stands silently in the crowded queue in the refugee camp. Her young eyes holding sadness far heavier than her years. 2026 © Ro Harez Khan.

For young women like Sumaiya, the camp environment is filled with sensory triggers. Ordinary sounds can instantly transport the mind back to the violence in Myanmar, causing the body to freeze and the heart to race, a physiological adaptation to an environment where safety is perceived as temporary.


Sahal, 16, a refugee teenager, spends long hours on social media as his primary window to the outside world. 2026 © Ayub Khan.
Sahal, 16, a refugee teenager, spends long hours on social media as his primary window to the outside world. 2026 © Ayub Khan.

The physical confinement of Rohingya youth is contrasted by a complex digital reality. Denied the ability to move or work, 60% of the community utilises social media daily. Sahal and his peers frequently compare their lives in makeshift shelters to the curated, aspirational lives they see online. This digital comparison creates a profound identity crisis, or shame, where life feels paused while the rest of the world moves on. Furthermore, constant exposure to violent imagery on social media acts as an acute traumatic stressor, preventing the psychological distance required for healing.


A photographer gathers with children to take selfies. Despite the difficult conditions, moments of play and curiosity remain part of daily life for young Rohingya growing up in displacement. 2026 © Ro Anis Hla Myint.
A photographer gathers with children to take selfies. Despite the difficult conditions, moments of play and curiosity remain part of daily life for young Rohingya growing up in displacement. 2026 © Ro Anis Hla Myint.

Bodies Carry the War


To capture the weight of this crisis, one must look beyond the clinical diagnosis and see the body as a historical record. In the camps of Cox’s Bazar, violence is not a memory of a finished event; it is a physical residue. Trauma here is an active, ongoing disruption of the human super-system, enforced by the architecture of the camp and the legal vacuum of statelessness. Following the insights of Dr Gabor Maté, trauma is not what happened in the past, but the internal wound and physiological adaptation to an environment that remains toxic today.


Saiful shows a bullet scar on his back from the violence he survived while fleeing Myanmar in 2017. 2023 © Sahat Zia Hero.
Saiful shows a bullet scar on his back from the violence he survived while fleeing Myanmar in 2017. 2023 © Sahat Zia Hero.

For the Rohingya, these physical reactions are not signs of a broken mind, but the body’s desperate attempt to survive genocidal conditions. When the world fails to provide a legal or political solution, the war simply migrates into the very biology of those left behind.


When a person is stripped of their agency, the body is left to carry the weight of the war alone. This is the biocultural reality of the refugee: a state where physical debris and psychological grief are a single, tangled entity.


The scar on Nabi Ullah’s leg is the somatic signature of a 2024 drone strike in Joilladdia that shattered his world. 2026 © Anayat Rahaman.
The scar on Nabi Ullah’s leg is the somatic signature of a 2024 drone strike in Joilladdia that shattered his world. 2026 © Anayat Rahaman.

The physical scar on Nabi Ullah’s leg is more than a mark of healing. While surgeons removed the larger fragments, the chronic pain remains, serving as a physical echo of the day his peace was gone. This is not a metaphor; it is the reality of a nervous system that cannot find safety. According to a recent community-led survey, a staggering 79.2% of refugees explicitly link this kind of persistent bodily pain to psychological tension.


Extracted shrapnel serves as a tactile reminder of the violence that claimed his child’s life. 2026 © Anayat Rahaman.
Extracted shrapnel serves as a tactile reminder of the violence that claimed his child’s life. 2026 © Anayat Rahaman.

Nabi Ullah keeps the metal shrapnel extracted from his legs as a certificate of reality, a proof of a history that the legal world continues to deny. These fragments act as a physical bridge to his home in Hadir Bill, anchoring a mind that oscillates between the sorrow of what was lost and a desperate longing for a secure homeland. In this architecture of despair, such objects are the only things preventing the reality of pain from being absorbed by the world's indifference.


The three pictures above: Once a fisherman, Abul Alom lost his leg to an explosion, a physical severing of his livelihood. 2026 © Anayat Rahaman.
The three pictures above: Once a fisherman, Abul Alom lost his leg to an explosion, a physical severing of his livelihood. 2026 © Anayat Rahaman.

Abul Alom was a fisherman from Rathidaung, his dignity was rooted in his ability to provide. After fleeing the 2024 violence between the Arakan Army and the Junta, he attempted to rebuild that dignity by fishing along the dangerous borderlands of Bangladesh. An IED explosion claimed his left leg and shattered his right, leaving him in a state of "post-traumatic stress" where his crutches and medical reports are his only evidence for a silent appeal for justice. Abul Alom’s physical state exemplifies what Maté calls a physiological disruption. In the camps, this often manifests as ba-ci-ta-kon (social withdrawal), a psychological strategy that was once a brilliant adaptation to endure the unendurable in Myanmar, but now contributes to a sense of being half alive.


Anuwar experiences the profound somatic mystery of gaa bish lager (body pain). His symptoms are the biological manifestations of dilor-shiac—a deep, heavy tension or worry. 2026 © Ayub Khan.
Anuwar experiences the profound somatic mystery of gaa bish lager (body pain). His symptoms are the biological manifestations of dilor-shiac—a deep, heavy tension or worry. 2026 © Ayub Khan.

Not all wounds are visible. Anuwar suffers from burning sensations and persistent body pain despite the absence of a medical diagnosis. In the camp clinics there is no injury to stitch and no infection to treat. His symptoms are the physical expression of dilor-shiac, a deep tension carried in the mind-soul. When fear and grief accumulate without release, the nervous system converts emotional pressure into physical signals. In this way the body becomes an archive.


The fence surrounding the camps is designed to keep the Rohingya inside. It does not keep violence out. Over the past years a shadow ecosystem of militant groups and criminal networks has emerged within the settlements. In an environment where formal justice is largely absent, intimidation fills the vacuum. For many residents this creates a second layer of confinement—one where even speaking openly can carry lethal consequences.


Foridul Islam knows the cost of standing up for his community. In the camps, teachers and activists who advocate for education and legal rights are frequently targeted by groups that benefit from silence. 2026 © Lokman Hakim.
Foridul Islam knows the cost of standing up for his community. In the camps, teachers and activists who advocate for education and legal rights are frequently targeted by groups that benefit from silence. 2026 © Lokman Hakim.

Foridul Islam represents those who continue to resist this pressure. Yet the price of such resistance is constant vigilance. By targeting educators, organisers, and community leaders, militant groups reinforce the same condition that the camp system itself produces: a society unable to move forward.


Fear changes behaviour in subtle but profound ways. Survey participants repeatedly described a need to hide opinions, avoid gatherings, and limit social contact to protect their families. When neighbours become potential threats, the trust that holds a community together begins to dissolve.


In this environment the system of control moves inward. The barbed wire surrounding the camp is only the outer boundary. The deeper confinement occurs when people begin to police their own thoughts.


Few stories illustrate this layered pressure more clearly than that of Ahtaram Shin. A researcher and writer, Ahtaram describes his life as trauma layered upon trauma. His fear began in 2012 in Maungdaw, when communal violence made even the walk to school dangerous. In Bangladesh, that fear has evolved into a constant tension. He recalls being stopped at a police checkpoint where, despite paying for permission to pass, he was beaten with a metal stick. The blows left deep clots in his muscles, but the humiliation cut deeper: a public degradation of someone who had been a respected member of his community.


Violence like this is not rare. Ahtaram once witnessed a father beaten by police in front of his children—an event he describes as a “thunder trauma,” a shock so intense it remains lodged in the memory of everyone who saw it. The consequences are practical as well as psychological. Ahtaram now avoids seeking treatment for a chronic respiratory disease because the fear of harassment by authorities outweighs the fear of illness.


Portrait of Ahtaram. 2026 © Sahat Zia Hero. 
Portrait of Ahtaram. 2026 © Sahat Zia Hero. 

His professional life has also exposed another dimension of exploitation. For six years he worked as a researcher and writer for an international humanitarian organisation, receiving only 600 to 700 taka per day (approximately five dollars) and no formal credit for his work. He eventually resigned, describing the volunteer system as a form of coerced labour that strips away dignity while benefiting institutions. To him, the power structure inside the camps resembles a distorted hierarchy: the monkey rules the owl while the fox manipulates the labour of others.


When trauma cannot be spoken, the body keeps the record. Across the camps many refugees report symptoms that medicine struggles to classify: burning sensations, chronic fatigue, persistent pain. Clinics often find no clear physical cause. Yet the suffering is undeniable. Within the Rohingya understanding of the self, where brain, mind-soul, and body form a single system, these symptoms are not mysterious, they are the physical language of unresolved tension.


Fatema carries dili-zokhom (deep trauma) after witnessing her village burn in 2017 and her husband’s death in 2024. 2026 © Ayub Khan.
Fatema carries dili-zokhom (deep trauma) after witnessing her village burn in 2017 and her husband’s death in 2024. 2026 © Ayub Khan.

Fatema, 30, fled Myanmar twice. After witnessing her village burn in 2017, she lost her husband during violence in 2024. She now lives in a state the Rohingya described as constant alertness. Sudden noises trigger nightmares and involuntary shock responses. Her nervous system behaves as though the violence has never ended. Inside the camps, grief rarely resolves. Instead, it accumulates.


Sumoda experiences bekaar (worthless), feeling unable to provide for her children in the stagnation of camp life. 2026 © Ayub Khan.
Sumoda experiences bekaar (worthless), feeling unable to provide for her children in the stagnation of camp life. 2026 © Ayub Khan.

Sumoda, 32, describes her condition as worthless. With no legal right to work and a husband struggling with his own mental health, she feels unable to provide for her children. Over time, this prolonged powerlessness has produced a persistent sadness that drains motivation and energy.


Dil Bahar lives with dilor-furani (deep grief) and the pain of unresolved separation from her husband. 2026 © Ayub Khan.
Dil Bahar lives with dilor-furani (deep grief) and the pain of unresolved separation from her husband. 2026 © Ayub Khan.

For Dil Bahar, 51, the wound is separation. She has not seen her husband since fleeing Myanmar. The Rohingya term judaiyee captures the physical ache of this unfinished loss. To protect herself from further pain, she has gradually withdrawn from social life.


Hamida Begum holds her family card after a fire destroyed her shelter, living in constant worry over repeated disasters. 2026 © Ayub Khan.
Hamida Begum holds her family card after a fire destroyed her shelter, living in constant worry over repeated disasters. 2026 © Ayub Khan.

Hamida Begum’s anxiety comes from the environment itself. After losing her shelter to fire, she lives with a constant worry about the next disaster. Holding the family card that proves her existence within the camp system, she describes statelessness as deshór-oshántí: a condition where life has no stable ground. For many women in the camps, this accumulation of grief, insecurity, and stagnation produces the same outcome: chronic fatigue, body pain, and a gradual erosion of personal agency.


Shomsul, 68, spends much of his time reading the Quran at the entrance of his shelter. Neighbours say he rarely sleeps and prays through the night. For many Rohingya refugees, religious faith becomes a source of emotional resilience. 2021 © Sahat Zia Hero
Shomsul, 68, spends much of his time reading the Quran at the entrance of his shelter. Neighbours say he rarely sleeps and prays through the night. For many Rohingya refugees, religious faith becomes a source of emotional resilience. 2021 © Sahat Zia Hero



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