A Burmese minority are fleeing the region in large numbers to live in self-made refugee camps. “They call themselves Rohingyas, a Muslim minority from Burma, 30,000 of whom have been so cruelly persecuted by their country's military junta, in large measure because of their religion, that they have chosen to flee over the border to live in a refugee camp that they themselves built, without the help of the United Nations or anybody else. It is on a little hillside that is so hot, cramped, stinking, hungry and disease-ridden that, by contrast, the neighbouring string of squalid Bangladeshi fishing villages feels like the Costa del Sol.” The young men are the target of the “boat people” who promise transport to havens such as Malaysia where work is more plentiful in exchange for around $200 a head, a vast sum beyond the means of most.

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