博客

A devastating landslide has claimed the lives of eight people, among them seven student girls, after it struck a girls’ Islamic study school at the world’s largest Rohingya refugee settlement in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, compounding a growing humanitarian crisis fueled by relentless seasonal monsoon rains.

The disaster unfolded on Wednesday afternoon, when a cascade of mud and debris buried the makeshift school hut, triggering immediate, frantic search and rescue operations led by local relief authorities. As of the latest official updates, rescue teams have managed to extract 13 people trapped beneath the mudslide, eight of whom could not be revived after being pulled from the debris. Among the fatalities are seven students between the ages of 7 and 12 and one female teacher, while five other injured children have been transported to local medical facilities for urgent care. The total number of people who were inside the school at the time of the landslide remains unconfirmed, local officials confirmed.

This landslide is just the latest in a string of rain-triggered disasters that have shaken the Cox’s Bazar region since Sunday, when this year’s monsoon season intensified to bring record levels of rainfall to the coastal district. Prior to the school disaster, official data already recorded at least eight additional Rohingya refugee deaths from separate landslides across the settlement, five of which were children.

Cox’s Bazar is currently home to more than 1 million Rohingya refugees, the vast majority of whom fled a brutal military crackdown in their native Myanmar in 2017 that left thousands of Rohingya dead and forced more than 700,000 to cross the border into Bangladesh. As a stateless ethnic Muslim minority in majority-Buddhist Myanmar, Rohingya people have long been denied full citizenship and basic rights in their home country, leaving them dependent on humanitarian aid in the overcrowded Bangladesh camps. Most refugees live in flimsy, makeshift homes constructed from tarpaulin and bamboo, many of which are built on precarious steep hillsides that are extremely vulnerable to mudslides during heavy monsoon rains.

Local disaster management authorities have warned that the risk of further catastrophe remains high, with additional heavy rainfall forecast across the region in the coming days. Officials have already issued urgent warnings for impending landslides and flash floods, and have begun moving high-risk families out of vulnerable slope-side settlements to safer emergency shelters.

A devastating monsoon-driven landslide has claimed the lives of at least five children after crashing into an Islamic school within a sprawling Rohingya refugee camp in southeastern Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district, a senior fire service official has confirmed. The Cox’s Bazar camp complex hosts more than 1 million displaced Rohingya refugees who fled persecution in neighboring Myanmar, making it one of the largest refugee settlements in the world.

Dollar Tripura, local head of Bangladesh’s Fire Service and Civil Defense, stated that the disaster struck mid-lesson, when children were gathered in their classes for the school day. Rescuers managed to pull five injured children out of the debris alive, but the official warned that the death toll is likely to rise, as teams suspect additional people remain trapped and buried under the mud and rubble.

As of Wednesday evening, search and rescue efforts were still ongoing, with crews working through the night to locate possible survivors. This latest tragedy comes just three days after separate rain-induced landslides in the same camp region killed at least eight other people, amplifying concerns about the safety of refugees living in at-risk hilly terrain.

Bangladesh’s national weather office, based in the capital Dhaka, has issued warnings for additional heavy rainfall across the region over the coming days, raising fears of more landslides. In response to the ongoing risks, local authorities have launched an urgent relocation effort to move refugees out of high-risk hilly areas that are prone to mudslides during monsoon season. More than 1,000 refugees have already been moved to safer locations, though officials report that many displaced families remain reluctant to leave their makeshift huts and small plots of land, even after repeated official warnings of the dangers.

For years, Bangladesh has hosted the bulk of the Rohingya refugee population, who fled a 2017 military crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine State that the United Nations has labeled ethnic cleansing. The Bangladeshi government has repeatedly called on the international community to support a safe repatriation process for refugees to return to their homeland in Myanmar, but years of negotiations have failed to move the process forward, leaving the repatriation initiative effectively stalled.

Ninety years after American journalist Edgar Snow completed his groundbreaking journey to China’s northern Shaanxi revolutionary base area, scholars, family representatives, and legacy stewards from around the globe gathered at Peking University this Tuesday to reaffirm the enduring global relevance of his work: a commitment to truthful reporting that builds bridges of understanding across deeply divided societies.

Hosted under the theme *Legacy of Edgar Snow: International Symposium on Contemporary Value and Inspiration to the World*, the event drew a diverse cohort of attendees, including members of Snow’s direct family, leadership from the U.S.-based Edgar Snow Memorial Foundation, and Chinese and international researchers who have spent decades studying Snow’s life and impact. Experts from a range of academic and policy fields also joined the conversation to contextualize his work for 21st-century geopolitics.

In 1936, Snow made history as the first Western journalist to secure on-the-ground access to China’s revolutionary base areas, at a time when most of the world had almost no accurate information about the Chinese Communist Party, the Red Army, and the unfolding Chinese revolution. His resulting book, *Red Star Over China*, became the first widely circulated, authoritative account of China’s revolutionary movement for global audiences, shaping how generations of people outside China understood the country’s trajectory.

A personal statement from Snow’s daughter, delivered to symposium attendees by his great-grandnephew Samuel Colin Maclean, outlined the core journalistic principles that guided Snow’s work throughout his career. Snow, she wrote, held firm to the belief that a journalist’s core duty is to witness events firsthand and report what they see freely, independently, and without bias. “When he saw progress, he reported it. When he saw problems, he reported those too,” the statement read, adding that Snow wished to be remembered as two things above all: a loyal friend of the Chinese people, and a truth-seeking reporter dedicated to fostering deeper mutual understanding and peaceful relations between people of all nations.

Sidne Ward, president of the Edgar Snow Memorial Foundation in the United States, framed the symposium as more than a commemorative event—it was an opportunity to reflect on how Snow’s values speak directly to the challenges of today’s interconnected yet fractured world. Ward noted that Snow built his work on four core commitments: curiosity, open dialogue, intentional understanding, and the courage to step into unfamiliar contexts to listen to perspectives that differ from one’s own. Through his unflinching, on-the-ground reporting, she said, Snow helped people on opposite sides of geopolitical divides see each other more clearly.

Ward emphasized that few bilateral relationships carry as much global weight today as the relationship between China and the United States, and that Snow’s legacy is more relevant now than ever. Unlike many historical legacies that are tied to a single institution or nation, she added, Snow’s work is now sustained by a dynamic, global network of researchers and advocates committed to his values.

Rigorous, fact-based reporting, rigorous academic scholarship, and sincere person-to-person connection remain the most effective tools to cut through misunderstanding and build mutual respect, Ward argued. Snow’s greatest contribution to the world, she said, is not just the landmark stories he wrote, but the cross-cultural bridges of understanding he helped build between peoples and communities separated by ideological and geographic divides.

He Guangcai, secretary of the Communist Party of China Peking University Committee, echoed that framing, noting that when Snow traveled to northern Shaanxi in 1936, the outside world operated with profound misinformation and limited knowledge of the Chinese Communist Party. Snow broke through information blockades to get to the ground and report what he actually saw, He said.

Through his firsthand writing and original photojournalism, Snow accurately recorded the realities of the Chinese revolution and opened a critical window for the global community to understand the Chinese Communist Party, as well as the core ideals and mission of Chinese communists, He added. Looking back at Snow’s full life and career, his legacy offers clear, urgent lessons for today’s world: a non-negotiable commitment to truth, facts, and firsthand observation, paired with a deep humanistic commitment to global peace and equality.

Along with panel discussions and keynote addresses, the symposium also marked two key new initiatives to expand global research into Snow’s legacy: attendees oversaw the release of a new think tank report exploring the contemporary value and global significance of Snow’s work, and formally launched a new global academic research program dedicated to studying Snow’s life and lasting impact.