Welcome to PORT OF ENTRY
Bringing attention to stories the world has lost interest in.
Welcome to the first edition of Port of Entry, a weekly newsletter that brings attention to global news stories long after the world loses interest in them.
Out of the news cycle, out of mind.
As a child of Bangladeshi immigrants, I grew up tethered to two worlds as so many first-generation kids do. My curiosity about my homeland and how people outside of the United States live led me to journalism.
In 2018, I moved to Bangladesh to report on the world’s largest refugee crisis at the time: the Rohingya—a muslim minority in neighboring Myanmar that have been systemetically persecuted for decades by the Myanmar government for being a minority in a Buddhist-majority country. Over 700,000 Rohingya fled across the border to Bangladesh to seek refuge among the hundreds and thousands of refugees that had already been living there during earlier exoduses.
Aid started flowing in, trees were cut down, elephants were displaced so that extended camps could be built to house the now over a million refugees in a country of 170 million people in the global south.
Their stories were horrific. The first person I interviewed was an eight-year-old girl who stared at me stonily as my translator/colleague relayed my question of how she got to Bangladesh. I was not prepared for the answer: she had floated on her dead grandmother’s body in the Naf River, which linked Myanmar and Bangladesh.
Stories like this managed to grab headlines for a short period of time, but eventually the news cycle moved on. The Rohingya refugees, however, are still in limbo, waiting for the international community to help them go home.
It’s important to keep telling the stories of people all over the world, who have left their homes for one reason or another, in search of peace, prosperity and dare I say it, happiness—to hold the powerful accountable, to bring awareness, to keep human empathy alive.
And that’s exactly what you’ll find in Port of Entry, every week.
For tips and story ideas, please reach out to portofentry00@gmail.com or on signal at 646-479-7979.
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Read some of my past global reporting here:
#Metoo Bangladesh: The Textile Workers Uniting Against Harassment (Guardian)
These Women Make Your Zara Jeans. They’re Demanding to be Paid Fairly (Elle.com)
A Helpline in Nigeria Fights Abstinence-Only Sex Ed (VICE)
Underground sex industry in Greece (MarieClaire.com)
Pakistan’s Women-Only Rickshaw (Refinery29.com)
Speed Sisters: All-Female Race Car Drivers in West Bank (Refinery29.com)