Agence-France Presse journalist Ed Jones photographed the toys (some more obvious than others) that Rohingya children brought with them on what is, at many turns, a chaotic and treacherous journey to Bangladesh from increasingly violent security forces in their home of Myanmar.
On Thursday, Doctors Without Borders said that more than 6,700 Rohingya, including at least 730 children below the age of five, were killed in August and September. The NGO called these “the most conservative estimations.”
While he found that many adults brought nothing with them, kids were another story. “As a father, I was interested to see … the rudimentary toys that they were playing with,” Jones told the Washington Post.
Hubaib, 3, and a spinning toy | Photographs by Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images
Rokhsana Begum, 7, with a small sieve
Saiful Islam, 9, with a toy gun
Abi Asad, 3, and a spinning toy
Halima Khatun, 6, with a whistle and razor blade
Mohammad Rafiq, 8, with a toy whistle
Shahidul Amin, 5, with part of a plastic bottle
Abdul Hafez, 5, with bottle caps he uses in a game
Mohammad Shahed, 4, with a battery he’s disassembled
Shawkat Ara, who doesn’t know her age, with a sieve
Warish Shah, 3, with a pen knife and nail clipper
Mohhamad Hussein, 10, with a discarded syringe
Mohammad Rejuan, 10, with a syringe and rubber tube
Khairul Amin, 6, with a piece of plastic
Isha Rab, 5, with a band of fabric