Drowned Rohingya child brings back chilling image of Aylan Kurdi

He was on his way to be united with his father, but fate had something else in store for Mohammed Shohayet, a 16-month-old Rohingya baby, whose photograph, in which he is seen lying lifeless, sends a chill down the spine.

Shohayet was escaping from Myanmar and fleeing to Bangladesh when his overloaded boat sank in the Naf river. He was accompanied by his uncle, mother and brother.

The image, in which the baby is seen lying head down is eerily similar to the photograph of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian refugee whose body was found in a similar position after having been washed ashore on the Turkish coast in September 2015.

"When I see the picture, I feel like I would rather die," Mohammed's father, Zafor Alam, told CNN. "There is no point in me living in this world."

Describing their situation, he said, "In our village, helicopters fired guns at us, and the Myanmar soldiers also opened fire on us. We couldn't stay in our house. We fled and went into hiding in the jungle."

Rohingya Muslims, majority of whom live in Burma, are considered illegal immigrants. Their condition has not been paid much attention to by even the leaders of the country. They have been subjected to violence in the hands of the Myanmar military junta, in which many have been reported to have died. Human rights activists have been raising the issue of how Rohingya Mulisms have been betrayed by everyone for years now, even though little has been done to mitigate their extreme misery and persecution.

Why do we need to wait for such unfortunate incidents for the world to take notice of a certain section of people? Much like Kurdi’s image, that highlighted the plight of the victims of the Syrian refugee crisis, will Shohayet’s photograph finally make the world take notice of the Rohingya people?

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