Walking through a refugee camp in Bangladesh not far from where he was born, Samsul Alam could feel the eyes of people on him.
People sat on the steps of small makeshift shops crowded by bamboo and tarpaulin huts, a few chewed betel nuts, others had their hands behind their heads, or arms hugging their knees, as they watched the world go by.
"This is pretty much what I was doing when I was 14 years old back in my camp," Samsul said.
Samsul is a Rohingya Muslim. His family is from the Rakhine state in Myanmar, on the other side of the Naf river, but he was born in the Nayapara refugee camp in 1995, after his parents fled persecution in 1992.
His family was one of the lucky few allowed to resettle in Australia in 2009 and 2010. He was 16 years old when he left the camp for the first time before settling in Brisbane.
Thirteen years later, walking the busy streets of the Kutupalong camp, 35 kilometres north of Nayapara, Samsul knew he stuck out.
"People were looking at us strangely.
"I was wearing jeans. Not everybody there can afford new jeans," he said.
Kutupalong was established in 2017, when more than 725,000 Rohingya fled violence inflicted by Myanmar's armed forces, the Tatmadaw.
The UN estimated 10,000 people were killed between August and September that year, and cited "at least 392" villages were partially or wholly burned to the ground.
Men, women and children were systematically killed. There were widespread reports of rape during the "clearance operations" conducted by the Tatmadaw.
In 2021 the Tatmadaw overthrew Myanmar's democratically-elected government and have controlled the country ever since.
Roughly a million people now inhabit the Nayapara and Kutupalong camps, making the Rohingya one of the world's largest stateless populations.
Since July 2012, the federal government granted less than 60 visas to Rohingya refugees from Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Myanmar.
The Department of Home Affairs would not clarify if any of the visas had been granted to people from the camps in Bangladesh.
A department spokesperson said, "any persons, including Rohingya, who believe they meet the requirements for a humanitarian visa and wish to seek Australia's assistance can make an application," adding, "each application is considered on its individual merit".
"Priority is given to the most vulnerable applicants who are assessed as refugees by the UNHCR and formally referred to Australia for resettlement, and those proposed by an immediate family member," the spokesperson said.
'How am I going to go back?'
Samsul returned to Kutupalong in February to track down his family who fled the Tatmadaw in 2017, but just making it through the camp gate was an ordeal.
Despite travelling with two of his cousins who lived in the camps, Samsul was stopped by the guards.
"They started shaking us, they started searching us — they took our phones, our wallets and everything and started pushing both my cousins," Samsul said.
"It was normal for my cousins, they will not react to it because it's been happening to them so much."
Eventually they bribed the guard with 2,500 Taka — roughly $AU27. Samsul was permitted for two hours in the camp.
At the camp's market place they found one of his father's brothers, who took them back to his house — a 2 metre by 2 metre home, just like the one Samsul had shared with his family of eight in Nayapara many years prior.
"I was touching the roof when I stood up," Samsul said.
He met more than 10 aunts and uncles, and "uncountable" cousins for the first time.
"I was just looking at all of them. I didn't know how to react. Mum and Dad never told me how many cousins I had," Samsul said.
"One of my uncles said, 'I'm your dad's brother', [He] looked exactly like my dad, and I never saw him … I have a brother who looks like this."
Speaking with his family, Samsul learned how similar life in the new camp was to what his family had left behind in 2010.
"It's still the same. They've got nothing to do. There are no activities There is no work to do. For the kids there is very little education, there's no formal education or anything."
Samsul asked one of his uncles if he would consider being going back to the Rakhine state.
"He said, 'How am I going to go back to Burma? I've now got six kids. And I lost a younger brother in that house. There's no house. There's no land'.'"
Samsul left the camp through a hole in the fence just before his two hours was up.
"My uncle told me, 'It's not safe [to go back past the guards] because if they know you are here, they know you visited us as well. There'll be people looking for you, and later try to create a problem for us'."
A stateless generation
In 1992, Samsul's parents were fleeing the Burmese military Operation Pyi Thaya — also known as Operation Clean and Beautiful Nation.
Launched two years after Burma became Myanmar, the operation was a continuation of systematic oppression of Rohingya in Myanmar where they were incorrectly deemed illegal immigrants despite centuries of history in the region.
More than 200,000 Rohingya fled execution, assault, sexual violence, forced labour and the destruction of villages and mosques.
Since then, entire lives have been lived in the Nayapara camp.
Arunn Jegan is the former head of mission for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Bangladesh, overseeing 10 medical facilities in the camps, including three hospitals.
He said the conditions in the camps were some of the worst he had seen.
"A generation of people have grown up in refugee camps — they're stateless," he said.
He said life there had stagnated.
"Of course, life does go on, but is this a life that, by any international means, is worth living?
"I've been going there for the last six years and seeing the same friends, seeing the same refugees at the same houses — their lives really haven't changed that much. Well, you know, I've done so much in my life in the last six years," Mr Jegan said.
A friend of Samsul's, Aasir*, is one of those still stuck in limbo.
He grew up in the same block as Samsul, playing soccer and cricket in the camp with a tight knit group of boys. Aasir was heartbroken when Samsul left the camp when he was younger.
"We were not too educated at that time, you know, we were kids. So I thought that Samsul is going to another planet and I will not catch up with him anymore in life. So we cried a lot at that time."
He said after Samsul left, his father decided they would risk sending him out of the camp to get an education by bribing an authority and enrolling him as a local student.
"I determined that education is everything, without education, there is nothing to be changed," Aasir said.
He said his qualifications and high school graduation gave him more freedom than others in the camp.
Once he escapes the camp through a hole in the fence, police do not think he is Rohingya, but he still doesn't have enough documentation to get a job to support his family.
"My father is a brain tumour patient and also paralysed. My mother is also some sort of paralysed," he said.
"I am the only breadwinning person in my family and I have no jobs right now.
"I feel like my journey of education is a futile experience here in Bangladesh. Although I have qualifications, knowledge, experiences, I can get nothing."
Left without options, Aasir has decided he will get on a boat for Malaysia, where the chances for resettlement are higher and refugees have more opportunities for work.
"I also decided to take the risk and I will leave within two or three months," he said.
"I decided to go to Malaysia by sea route because I can't see my parents dying before me without treatment.
"Many of my friends and teachers died on the sea route. I miss them, I cry a lot in the night, when I remember that I'm also going on that path. I don't know what God has kept for me. If God has mercy, then I will survive; or not, then I may also die there."
According to the UN more than 3,500 Rohingya attempted sea crossings in 39 boats in 2022, mostly from Myanmar and Bangladesh — a 360 per cent uptick from 2021.
At least 348 people died or went missing at sea in 2022.
A risky journey
Despite repeated attempts through official and unofficial routes, Samsul was not allowed into Nayapara camp.
Instead, 14 of his friends snuck out of the camp to visit him in Cox's Bazar — the closest city to the camps. It's almost a 70 kilometre journey, with three police checkpoints where cars are searched for Rohingya people.
They travelled separately, following Aasir's instructions.
"I advised them never to tell that you are a refugee, that you are Rohingya. Always [say] you are local people and you are going to hospital to see my mum or my uncle who is a patient and made it to the to the hospital in Cox's Bazaar."
Aasir said they risked imprisonment if they were caught.
Samsul said for some it was the furthest they had ever travelled from the camp.
They stayed in a hotel, ate meals together and played football on the beach. At night, they sang songs of their childhood in Rohingya by the water, emboldened by the power of Samsul's Australian passport and fluent English.
"That was my highlight of the trip — I got to see my childhood friends after 13 years," Samsul said.
They told stories to fill in the gaps left by the years apart.
"Sometimes when listening to them, my tears start falling and I'm just listening and listening," Samsul said.
"At least 10 of them said to me, 'if we don't hear anything from the United Nations in the next 12 months about resettlement, we're going to get on a boat to Malaysia'."
Some had already taken that step.
"[My friend] Mohamed Rafiq gave his life up on the sea just two months ago," Samsul said.
"He got on a boat with his sister trying to get to Malaysia and the boat broke down and the engine stopped working. They were just floating around for months. They'd run out of food and the engine wasn't working and no country or navy or anyone was intercepting them … people were dying.
"Apparently, one morning, they saw an island and they thought if he jumped into the water, he would make it to the island. He jumped, and he never came back.
"He never made it to the island, however, the boat made it to an island in Indonesia … his sister was saved."
When he posed the danger to his friends considering the same journey, and how Rafiq had died, they were exasperated.
"That's the only thing they say at the moment — they will get somewhere different if they get on a boat, they'll get somewhere one day."
'They'll give back' when given an opportunity
Aasir said he thinks Samsul is living in "heaven" now compared to the "hell" of those left in the camps.
That heaven is a two-storey brick house in Brisbane's north. Samsul lives there with his six brothers and sisters, his parents, a brother-in-law and a baby niece.
A circumference of chilli plants borders the home. The front door is crowded with shoes and the yard is busy with cars. It is the house of a working family.
"Today there are Rohingya that came from the camps that are in the army, in the navy — trying to get into the air force … I know someone from the camp that is studying to be a neurologist," Samsul said.
"If you give more opportunities to these people, they'll give back to this country.
"We are talking a lot about Ukraine all the time. Recently we brought a lot of refugees from Afghanistan ... Why not Rohingya?
"Have we not faced enough problems to be on the top of the list? I see we face the most problems. This problem has been going on for generations and generations.
"Even if they [took] 100 refugees a year, they would give hope to my friends.
"Young people are giving up their life, and we are just blaming it on the boats. But we can stop the boats.
"My main point would be we need more refugee intake so they don't end their life on the sea."
Arunn Jegan from MSF says Australia has an opportunity to be a regional leader to help the Rohingya.
He said if Australia truly were giving priority "to the most vulnerable", it was hard to understand why the Rohingya are not at the top of the list.
"If you want to talk about some of the most deserving refugee applicants, you would have to look at stateless people. These are people that have no home," he said.
"The problem is that it's a million people. How do you resettle a million people?
"We can support countries like Bangladesh and Malaysia in taking care of the Rohingya. I do believe [because of] this containment policy right now — confining Rohingya to camps, keeping them in limbo — there will be an overflow."
*Name changed for safety reasons
