‘I can ride the bus. I can walk the streets’: the joy of freedom for Rohingya resettled in the US

A diplomatic breakthrough has allowed 62 refugees to start a new life in America. Yet a million still remain in fear and poverty in the Bangladeshi camps

After 23 hours on his first international flight, it was only after stepping off the plane in the United States that Nurul Haque finally felt the relief of escaping the refugee camps of Bangladesh, where he was born.

Haque was among the first Rohingya refugees allowed to leave Bangladesh in more than a decade. The 62 people who have flown to the US since late last year might be few, but resettlement has given them hope of opportunity and security that was denied them in Bangladesh.

“We have escaped the prison,” says Haque, 31, who moved to Portland, Oregon on the west coast with his wife and son. “For 31 years, I did not have even basic rights. All this time we lived with only primary services – school, food, health. Nothing more than that.”

Bangladesh hosts almost a million Rohingya refugees but limits their access to services and bans them from travelling beyond the fenced-in refugee camps, which have existed since the 90s. One of them, Kutupalong, is the largest refugee camp in the world.