Sisters Momtaz and Dildar Begum with their daughters Rozeya and Nurkolima (Kaamil Ahmed) – Story Below
By Kaamil Ahmed – December 11, 2019
Myanmar will defend itself against claims of genocide today, probably by arguing that it was carrying out routine clearance operations, against “terrorists”, and perhaps admitting some excesses but not planning.
But in the refugee camps of Bangladesh, the place that hosts more Rohingya than anywhere else in the world, even their homeland, there is evidence of another story. There are Rohingya who can tell you not only what happened, in uncomfortable detail, what happened to them in 2017, but what happened to them the other times the military came. They can tell you what happened the other times their families fled. There are stories of how life for them broke down completely, how from 1978 onwards they were stripped of every right, including citizenship, and ghettoised.
Here are some of those faces, to go with the stories Myanmar’s government is trying to defend itself against.
Momtaz and Dildar Begum
Sisters from Tula Toli, they were rounded up on the river bank after the army arrived on the morning of August 30. The women were separated from the men, who were first brought down with a hail of fire and then by machete. Both the sisters, who had no idea where the other was, were taken from where they were waiting and raped by soldiers. The soldiers then locked them in burning homes and left them to die. Momtaz and Dildar survived though. Each thinking their whole family had been wiped out aside from the single daughter each clung to.
Anwara Begum
Downstream from Tula Toli, Anwara and her family had spent their days hiding from the military in the forest. But when the military arrived in Tula Toli and she could see so many bodies in the water they couldn’t haul them out quick enough to bury them all, her family decided to give up. That meant breaking a promise. She had been to Bangladesh twice before, in 1978 and the 1990s. She had been forced to leave twice. During her second refuge, as a young mother, she lost her child to the monsoon weather. On the boat back, she swore she would never set foot in Bangladesh again.
Asmida Begum
Asmida doesn’t live in Bangladesh. She lives in Bangkok. But she had never planned to go there. In fact, she only found out when she was on the way.
When the military attacked her village, the 15-year-old ran like everyone else. She jumped aboard a boat waiting near her village like everyone else did. And when that boat sailed to the Bay of Bengal, she and everyone else found they were being sent to Thailand. This was the network of Rohingya exploitation that flourished before 2015. It took Rohingya to the jungles of Thailand where they would demand ransoms from their families before releasing them into Malaysia. But Asmida was young and had no way to contact her family. So they sold her into a marriage.
Medium.com – website link includes additional photos and stories
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