Defending the Rights of Rohingya People and Seeking Justice

We, The Rohingya are indigenous people of Rakhine in western Myanmar/Burma, where our people have cultivated our culture for centuries.  We traced our ancestry from various people such as Arabs, Mughals, Portuguese, Pathans, Indo, Bengal and Turkish.  Even after independence from British rule, our father’s generation was recognized as citizens of Myanmar. Despite irrefutable evidence, the junta denied and/or destroyed a long history of our existence in Rakhine, finally revoking our citizenship when it enacted a citizenship law in 1982.  We have been subject to routine military crackdowns and discrimination at the hands of Myanmar military junta including Buddhist Rakhine groups in 1978, 1991-1992, 2012, 2015, and particularly in 2016-2017, when most of us were forced to cross the border to Bangladesh.

During all those years, we have faced regular summary executions, enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment, and forced labor, violence, arbitrary arrest and detention, extortion, and other abuses including, but not limited to, restriction on movement, marriage, practice of our religion, education, and jobs.  One never forgets increased incitement of hatred and religious intolerance by ultra-nationalist Buddhists against our community  in the wake of a serious wave of communal violence since 2012. In 2016 and 2017 in particular, an estimated 725,000 refugees from Rakhine, Myanmar, had crossed the border into Bangladesh following the genocidal acts of Myanmar security forces.The plight of our people never ends. Our people are surviving in a dire camp condition every day.  No proper education is provided to our children.  Our freedom of movement is restricted.  We need to be safe and secure from fire, natural disaster, and violent crimes from armed groups.   We feel we are stuck in an open prison without any hope of getting better.  Our hope of returning home has little potential of realization. 

As Rohingya survivors, we would like to defend our rights.  Sometimes, we feel that our survival is our only hope for the future.  We do not want something big.  We want lives.  We want justice.  All we want is to live like any other ordinary human beings.  We want to see our children attending the school that cherishes their gifts.  We want to protect them from trafficking, drugs, murder and violence.  We just want dignity in our lives that is engraved in international human rights bills, for which we promise we will fight.  Please join us and be the change.