Sittwe, Myanmar (CNN) -- It's been three years since I reported on the plight of the Rohingya Muslim people of western Myanmar and neighboring Bangladesh.
We called our documentary "A Forgotten People," and it looked at appalling incidents where boatloads of refugees fleeing poverty and persecution arrived in Thailand only to be towed back out to sea and abandoned by the Thai security forces. Hundreds died or went missing.
But now that's changing. U.S. President Barack Obama addressed their plight during his recent visit to Yangon. The lukewarm response he got in the auditorium was nothing to the vitriol he got online. Even mentioning the name Rohingya is controversial for some in Myanmar
We have come to Rahkine to report on the latest threat to the Rohingya. What we have found is shocking. The Rohingyas are among the most persecuted people on the planet. In both Myanmar and Bangladesh -- where they have a deep-rooted heritage dating back to when it was known as East Bengal -- they are not officially citizens and are denied passports, access to health-care, education and decent jobs.
Each country claims the Rohingya is the other's problem. In July this year, the Bangladeshi government ordered three international aid organizations to stop helping Rohingya who were crossing the border from Myanmar.
In Myanmar, their perilous situation has become markedly worse in recent months. Mobs of Buddhist Rahkine extremists have been torching whole Rohingya villages.Hundreds have died and more than 100,000 people have been forced to flee, according to humanitarian groups.
But there is nowhere for them to go. So driven by fear many are congregating in huge makeshift camps on the edge of the Rahkine town of Sittwe.
I was expecting the camps to be grim -- but I wasn't prepared to see children starving to death. This isn't journalistic hyperbole. The two western doctors working unofficially here have watched several children perish before their eyes -- not from a rare tropical disease or an untreated chronic condition, but simply from malnutrition.
I find it sickening and outrageous that this is happening in a land of plentiful food in 2012. Perhaps I am naïve or too idealistic. I should probably know better, I should have seen enough of the world's misery and violence to be unaffected by a wide-eyed kid too fatigued to swat the flies from her eyes. But this one broke my heart.
She's not alone.
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