I’ll start this with an intro to the Rohingya.
The Rohingya are an ethnic (and religious) minority in Burma (Myanmar… though for personal reasons I will not call it Myanmar even though that is the present-day name because I do no support the military junta government) located in the western part of Burma in the Rakhine State, bordering Bangladesh. The Rohingya are Muslim in a country that is officially Buddhist. The Burmese government declared that the Rohingya are not Burmese people and refuse to grant them citizenship, thus making them a stateless people. Many flee to Bangladesh, Thailand and Saudi Arabia; though most stories involving the Rohingya seem to originate from Bangladesh and Thailand. The military junta in Burma forces the Rohingya (and other ethnic minorities like the Karen and Chin) to do forced labor (as I mentioned in a previous post), people are murdered and women are raped. Because of this, among other things, they flee. However, despite there being aid groups trying to provide food for them in Bangladesh, as an example, the Bangladeshi government blocks aid groups from delivering aid. They also will not allow any food to be distributed to “unregistered” Rohingya refugees so people are starving to death. The sanitation in the refugee camps is appalling, with open sewage flowing. Children don’t have access to proper edcuation and even for register Rohingya, food is extremely scarce. The story that I can think of that some people may know about is from when the Thai military was pulling boats full of Rohingya refugees out to sea and leaving them to die last year. That garnered some attention from the international media (BBC, CNN).
Here are some links for more information:
Arakan Rohingya National Organization (this site has some background information and a lot of current news stories)
Rohingya Info Center
We had our street campaign for Rohingya refugees today. It was brutal. I mean, I expect that not everyone wants to listen to people talking about refugees, human rights abuses and the like but it was worse than I expected. We set up in an area frequented by foreign tourists and Koreans alike… probably the best area asides from the downtown-City Hall area. There were many people there… Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, Americans, Canadians, Brits, French, Turks, etc.
I’ll preface this by saying the weather was miserable today. An incredibly sticky, humid 35 degrees (Celsius) and it rained off and on all day.
We had these amazing posters made up with photos of some refugees with quotes of their testimonies and an introduction to the Rohingya (all in Korean and English). We had games set up to attract more people to give us a chance to talk to more people as well. I would say 95-98% of the people walked past and ignored us. Many wouldn’t even look at the posters… they saw the “sad” pictures and quickly looked away. It feels frustrating, makes you feel like you’re wasting your time and also makes you feel hopeless.
