Clowns bring laughter to traumatised Rohingya children

KUTUPALONG AFP Oct30, 2017-The Rohingya boys and girls shrieked with delight as the clowns juggled hoops and somersaulted, their red-nosed antics provoking a sound rarely heard in the world’s largest refugee camp -- children’s laughter.   

The clowns have been providing much-needed levity in the crowded Bangladesh camps, where hundreds of thousands of traumatised Rohingya children spend long days in bleak and difficult conditions.   Mohammad Noor lives with his mother and three siblings in a makeshift shanty in the teeming Kutupalong camp, where a lack of food and water means a constant struggle to survive.   

The 10-year-old fled Myanmar last month after his father was killed in brutal violence by the army that the United Nations has likened to ethnic cleansing.