Mohamed takes us on a journey through the history of Burma (now Myanmar), the Rohingya people and his own seventeen years of life. Sharing the memories of carefree days, living simplistically with his family and recalling his harrowing escape from genocide Mohamed's unimaginable trek is filled with gratitude for finally landing in America as a refugee. Telling his story in a new language, Mohamed clearly conveys the struggles of the Rohingya people, his inconceivable encounters, his love for learning and his lifelong goals.
'Born to Struggle' is the journey of a young man, born as a stateless refugee to the world's most persecuted people, the Rohingya. Muhammad Noor's escape from the limbo of statelessness to chart his own path is a rare untold story of the Rohingya and a testament to the indomitability of the human spirit. Beginning from his birthplace in the hills of Makkah in the eighties, we witness Noor's battle to receive a basic education, his stay in a hellish detention center and his later contributions to the cause of his people. But amidst the trials, we also hear the heartwarming tales of his forefathers and daily acts of kindness given and received within the community of the Rohingya. 'Born to Struggle' gives us a special view into the world of a people suffering from the everlasting effects of genocide through the lens of a special Rohingya. It is a story of hope and of finding a way to persevere through life's worst challenges.
Widely-known as the world’s most persecuted minority group, the Rohingya in Myanmar are now facing extinction. Denied citizenship rights, denied their very ethnic identity, hundreds of thousands have fled Rakhine State in Myanmar over the border into Bangladesh, where they face squalid conditions. Many have witnessed death, mutilation and rape, as well as whole villages, what they called home, burning to ashes. Leading British Muslim fi gure Muhammad Abdul Bari has no doubt that what the Rohingya have been subject to, is genocide. In this concise but powerfully argued book, he brings to light the scale and barbarity of their suff ering and argues that the international community, through the UN, must ensure their full repatriation with full citizen rights to their homeland.
For decades Myanmar has been portrayed as a case of good citizen versus bad regime – men in jackboots maintaining a suffocating rule over a majority Buddhist population beholden to the ideals of non-violence and tolerance. But in recent years this narrative has been upended. In June 2012, violence between Buddhists and Muslims erupted in western Myanmar, pointing to a growing divide between religious communities that before had received little attention from the outside world. Attacks on Muslims soon spread across the country, leaving hundreds dead, entire neighbourhoods turned to rubble, and tens of thousands of Muslims confined to internment camps. This violence, breaking out amid the passage to democracy, was spurred on by monks, pro-democracy activists and even politicians. In this gripping and deeply reported account, Francis Wade explores how the manipulation of identities by an anxious ruling elite has laid the foundations for mass violence, and how, in Myanmar’s case, some of the most respected and articulate voices for democracy have turned on the Muslim population at a time when the majority of citizens are beginning to experience freedoms unseen for half a century.
The Rohingyas are one of the most persecuted ethnic minorities in the world. They used to live in the Arakan/Rakhine State of Burma/Myanmar for centuries, though it is a predominantly Buddhist country. Being victims of persecution as a result of ethnic cleansing and genocide, they started migrating to neighbouring countries from 1978, and after the massive migration August 2017 onwards, about 1.3 million Rohingyas now live in the south-eastern part of Bangladesh. This book offers a comprehensive portrait of how the state becomes instrumental in producing 'stateless' people, wherein both Myanmar and Bangladesh alienate the Rohingyas as illegal migrants, and they have to face unemployment, mental and sexual abuse, and deprivation of basic human necessities. The Rohingya proposes a new framework and theoretical alternative called 'subhuman life' for understanding the extreme vulnerability of the people as well as the genocide, ethnocide, and domicide taking place in the region. With several concrete ethnographic evidences, Nasir Uddin, apart from reconstructing the Rohingyas' regional history, sheds light on possible solutions to their refugee crisis and examines the regional political dynamics, South and Southeast Asian geopolitics, and bilateral and multilateral interstate relations.
Myanmar’s Buddhist-Muslim Crisis is a probing search into the reasons and rationalizations behind the violence occurring in Myanmar, especially the oppressive military campaigns waged against Rohingya Muslims by the army in 2016 and 2017. Over more than three years John Holt traveled around Myanmar engaging in sustained conversations with prominent and articulate participants and observers. What emerges from his peregrinations is a series of compelling portraits revealing both deep insights and entrenched misunderstandings. To understand the conflict, Holt must first accurately capture the viewpoints of his different conversation partners, who include Buddhists and Muslims, men and women, monks and laypeople, activists and scholars. Conversations range widely over issues such as the rise of Buddhist nationalism; the sometimes enigmatic and unexpected positions taken by Aung San Suu Kyii; use of the controversial term “Rohingya”; the impact of state-sponsored propaganda on the Burmese public; resistance to narratives emanating from international media, the United Nations, and the international diplomatic community; the frustrations of local political leaders who have felt left out of the policy-making process in the Rakhine State; and the constructive hopes and efforts still being made by forward-looking activists in Yangon. Three main perspectives emerge from the voices he listens to, those of Arakanese Buddhists who are native to Rakhine (once called Arakan), where much of the conflict has taken place; Burmese Buddhists (or Bamars), who make up the vast majority of Myanmar’s population; and the Rohingya Muslims, whose tragic story has been widely disseminated by the international media. What surfaces in conversation after conversation among all three groups is a narrative of siege: all see themselves as the aggrieved party, and all recount a history of being under siege. John Holt gives voice to these different perspectives as an engaged and concerned participant, offering both a critical and empathetic account of Myanmar’s tragic predicament. Readers follow the hopes and dismay of this seasoned scholar of Theravada Buddhism as he seeks his own understanding of the variously impassioned forces in play in this still unfolding drama.
Myanmar’s security forces have conducted clearance operations in the Rakhine State since August 2017, driving a mass exodus of ethnic Rohingyas to neighboring Bangladesh. In The Rohingya Crisis: Analyses, Responses, and Peacebuilding Avenues, Kawser Ahmed and Helal Mohiuddin address core questions about the conflict and its global and regional significance. Ahmed and Mohiuddin identify the defining characteristics of Rohingya identity, analyze the conflict, depict the geo-economic and geo-political factors contributing to the conflict, and outline peacebuilding avenues available for conflict transformation at the macro-, meso-, and micro-level. This book is recommended for students and scholars of anthropology, sociology, peace and conflict studies, political science, and Asian studies.
This book provides a history of the ethnic persecution of the Rohingyas in Myanmar and their disputed ethnic and national identity. It focuses on how the crisis has morphed into a geopolitical encounter among Bangladesh, China, India, and Myanmar. It further explores the moral, ethnographic, and public policy issues in the humanitarian response to the crisis of the Rohingya people. The volume analyzes the question of citizenship for the Rohingyas by analyzing historical documents and interviews which chronicle the status and identity of the community and their past involvement in the government and politics of Myanmar. The authors focus specifically on the changing geopolitical context of state formation in South Asia and the tense relationships between Myanmar and its neighbours – Bangladesh, China, and India. The book examines the alliances and disputes in the South and Southeast Asia region, which are predicated on economic and strategic gains, and their impact on the Rohingya crisis. It also looks at the failure of bilateral and multilateral negotiations among these countries to adequately address or alleviate the plight of the stateless Rohingyas. This volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of international studies, peace, human rights and conflict studies, sociology, ethnic studies, border studies, migration and diaspora studies, discrimination and exclusion studies, public policy, and Asian Studies. It will also be useful for professionals working in the media, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), think tanks, and policy makers, as well as general readers interested in the history of the persecution of the Rohingya people.
Bangladesh is the most vulnerable country to face the Rohingya crisis since the late 1970s and it is a continuous disturbing issue between Bangladesh and Myanmar that affecting their bilateral relations. But, in 2017, the last persecution against the Rohingyas in Myanmar have forced more than half a million people to flee into Bangladesh who are still living here creating various problems for the local community as well as for the whole country. This chapter aims to focus on the socio-political impacts of Rohingya crisis on Bangladesh as now more than one million Rohingya people are staying in the refugee camps of Cox’s Bazar district and also as unregistered refugees. This study analyzes secondary sources by using qualitative method to present different social and political impacts of this long-standing crisis on Bangladesh such as increasing of trafficking, criminal activities, prostitution and other illegitimate works in the local areas which have a bad impact on the whole country. It also analyzes the recent vulnerable situation of local host communities regarding this crisis.
