One-month-old Abdul Masood died after the wooden boat delivering his family to Bangladesh overturned Thursday in the waist-deep water of the Bay of Bengal on Shah Porir Dwip island, close to shore.
Their boat was one of the dozens of boats carrying persecuted Rohingya Muslim refugees' boats that were sank off the Bangladeshi border town of Teknaf on Thursday.
The haunting photograph captures the heart-wrenching story of the mass exodus of Rohingya Muslims fleeing apparent ethnic cleansing in mainly Buddhist Myanmar.
The following picture shows moment Abdul Masood's mother, Hamida Begum, discovers the death of her infant son.
Another tear-jerking image shows Begum pressing her lips against Abdul's. She cups his head. Rohingya Muslims around her are unable to comfort the grieving mother.
One picture depicts Abdul Masood's father, Nasir Ahmed, grieving as he holds his lifeless son after arriving in Bangladesh.
The last picture shows the little victim's aunt mourning and screaming as she notices her nephew is drowned.
Myanmar’s military stepped up a crackdown on Rohingya Muslims on August 25, claiming police and border outposts in the northern state of Rakhine allegedly came under attack by an armed group that is said to be defending the rights of the Rohingya. In the ensuing crackdown, over 6,000 Muslims have been killed in what is clearly a deliberate move of genocide and ethnic cleansing by Myanmar's army.
The genocide of Muslims, which has led to at least 370,000 Rohingyas scrambling across the border to Bangladesh, has prompted a barrage of criticism of Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto leader.
The Nobel laureate had been due to attend the UN general assembly next week, but will now skip the event following growing anger over genocide of Muslims in the country.
Myanmar’s government brands more than one million Rohingya Muslims in the country as “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh, launching a deadly and brutal crackdown on them. Rohingya Muslims, however, have had roots in the country that go back centuries. They are considered by the UN the “most persecuted minority group in the world.”
