Teaching about Myanmar and the Rohingya through One Man’s Eyes
Introduction by EAA Editorial Office
Background Facts for Teachers and Students
Physical and Human Geography
History
Editor’s Note: The following interview is compellingly powerful in indicating the plight of the Rohingya and, perhaps more important, highlights the inspiring efforts of an educator to improve lives.
A Class Captain from Myanmar
Interview by Ann Bayliss
Background: Beginnings of a Conversation
What follows is “Siddique Bin Kasim’s” story, condensed from what he told me via the encrypted communication service WhatsApp this April 2023, from his shelter in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. The names of everyone involved have been changed to protect them, as the junta has been attempting to destroy testimony. Our conversation traces its origins to a friendship made long before Siddique introduced himself via LinkedIn. I had been selling energy offsets to environmentally aware shoppers at farmers markets in New York City—a part-time job until I could find something better. One Sunday, a black-haired man my age was paired with me. He was studying engineering and was a good colleague for facts on renewable energy and world geography. When he offered to help with any computer issues I might have, we became friends. He came from Bangladesh, the poorest country in the world, he said. Dhaka, its capital, was called “City of Mosques” because it had so many houses of worship. One day, he scrolled on his phone to show pictures of his vacation to a beach with blindingly white sand. “Cox’s Bazar is the longest beach in the world,” he said, and showed a picture of a little girl smiling up at him, with the ocean sparkling behind her. When he had finished his studies and I had started working as a language teacher at Berlitz a few years later, he had a grim update: the longest, most beautiful beach in the world was now converted into a refugee camp. It sounded like a temporary solution, but rather alarming. Prone to floods and landslides, the sandy, hilly expanse between Chittagong and the Bay of Bengal is not meant for long-term habitation. Yet in 2013, such a strip of sand was the only place of safety for an increasing number. Now almost ten years into the future, one evening in 2022, I heard the plink of a “connect” request on LinkedIn. Someone wanted me to know about a school he was running with volunteer teachers. The location he gave was Cox’s Bazar, and he said he had been there since 2017. He and his colleagues, who were not officially authorized to work, were reaching out to the international community. They were members of the Rohingya community who had been “temporarily” on Cox’s Bazar for years, with no end in sight. I told this man that publishing his story might raise awareness and garner support from the international community, but that it might take a long time. “The longer the wait, the sweeter the victory,” he replied. We share the story now in the hope of creating a movement to change the situation for the better. Journalist Mathilde Cousin of France Télévisions and Matthew Smith of Fortify Rights have both met Siddique in the camps. He provided the pictures that accompany the interview. More detailed methodology is included at the end of the interview.Part I: School Days in Myanmar
My grandparents were the ones who raised me. They encouraged me to learn, and that is why we are able to speak in English today. When I was little, if I got upset or stressed over something, they would comfort me by telling me that one day I would be an educated man who could fix problems in the community. They would tease me a little saying I would be a doctor who could cure people...well, maybe not quite a doctor, a professor. They would say, “See, Professor! Look at how you have made everything better for us. Thank you, Professor!” I wanted to get an education, because if we had been educated people in Myanmar, they [the government] would never have been able to do what they did. My grandmother used to make me laugh by telling the story of Zabboror Ma Ara Ekbaro Nou Achum. Once, there was a widow who was a homeowner. One night while she was asleep, a thief entered her house. He crept into the kitchen and started taking everything out of her box. She pretended that her husband was there at first, and said, “Hey, Sawa Sawa Sur! Look—there’s a thief!” She pretended he was sleeping deeply and called him three or four times. But the burglar knew that her husband was dead. When she realized that the man was not frightened, she thought about the small fire in the stove and the pieces of wood inside. Slowly, she tiptoed into the kitchen and took a piece of firewood. She raised it over her head and then before he could turn around, she smacked the thief hard on the back with the burning wood. Then the thief yelled and ran out of the house, saying, “Ow! Zabboror Ma Ara Ekbaro Nou Achum!!!” meaning “Ow! mother of Zabboror, I will never ever come to your house again!!!” Surrounding our home were goba, mango, and jackfruit trees, with coconut and date palms. When I was around twelve or thirteen, I made a toy car about 1.5 feet long with wheels carved from a type of rubber shoe we call chancray and a bamboo frame. In the hills around our village, I found an iron rod to use as an axle so that whenever you pulled the car, it moved. My family thought I would become an engineer. There were always problems for the local Rohingya within the educational system, though. There were government-appointed teachers from the Burmese government, but they never arrived, so community leaders formed a school committee. They raised enough money from the local families to pay for an instructor. The school was called Saulewdey Dai. Most of the students, maybe 200, came from the Muslim village. About forty-five to fifty came from the Rakhine community (primarily Theravada Buddhist) across the road, and the school educated us together. If any family couldn’t pay, it was OK—you could still go to school. There were also many Muslim and Rakhine girls who were skilled in math and science. They spent so much time studying that they were better than we [the boys] were in math, science, and English. Then my friends and I made a pact to speak only in English to each other [to improve in speaking English]. Anyone using Rohingya language had to pay [the rest of us] 100 kyats, [0.05 USD at the time or the cost of two movies at the movie theater in Maungdaw]. I used to walk to the high school with my friend Hussein. He was funny and liked to get me in trouble. Traditionally, the best student was called the barik fua, the toughest in the class. That was me, and I was also Class Captain, one of three who helped lead the school. Hussein liked to pinch me during class. He knew I couldn’t do anything because he was my friend. Once, I borrowed my uncle’s motorbike to drive to school. My friends were so crazy to learn to ride it that they convinced me to skip class. We drove it to a nearby village and tried to stand up on the bike like [the actor] Fardeen Khan. We spent the whole day falling off and teasing each other: “See, if you hadn’t been trying to be an expert motorist . . . !”
Part II: “You Can Just Farm, You Cannot Own.”
There are many ethnic groups in Myanmar [Burma]: Burman, Rakhine (Arakan), Burmese Indian, Muslim, Chin, Rohingya. There are many, but the government of Myanmar has not included us [Rohingya] in their list. Before 1982, there were many Rohingya among the police and the military, but in 1982, the government started a campaign to banish the Rohingya from Arakan State. I wanted to marry one of my classmates from the Rakhine community. She also liked me very much, but I could not propose to her because if something went wrong, then her brothers and neighbors would kill me. A religious scholar known as Wee Rha Tho used to preach to the Rakhine women and Burmese women that it is better marrying a dog than a Rohingya. It is not because of religion, though. Sometimes this is related to religion and sometimes not. Arakan is a very valuable place because there are many natural resources: gas, diesel, platinum, and gold. At the time of my grandparents’ death, we owned a paddy field, a hill for grazing goats, and a shrimp field. I had the deeds, but the government tried to confiscate everything. They wrote that “You can just farm, you cannot own the shrimp field or the paddy field.” Some people gave them their documents, but I kept mine. I brought the documents to Bangladesh and even keep a copy in Google Drive. I had many Burmese friends who matriculated with me [from high school], and they have by now completed their master’s degrees. If I had the chance, I could also have completed a master’s degree. We [Rohingya] could not use mobile phones freely. My friends and I used to go to a place in the northern part of our village, where there is a big banyan tree, to talk and play football [soccer]. Under the shade of the tree, sometimes we would ask each other questions like, “Why is our teacher blind [to our abilities]?” Rohingya people were also not allowed to have a gun, or not even to use a catapult to hunt birds. Some people in the village made arrows and nets to hunt deer, but they kept them hidden. When the government started saying that we were illegal migrants from Bangladesh, even our neighbors in Rakhine, who knew that our fathers and grandfathers had been born there, started calling us “Bengalis.” In 2010, the government set up checkpoints to restrict movement. They would fine or beat us if we even tried to visit another village. Since there was no hope of my studying engineering at the university in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine State, I returned to my village to teach. There was a police training center in MaungDaw near my village, so in the evening, at 4 p.m., the cadets and some of the authorities used to come out and play football with us. During those games, the Burmese were very good to us. Whenever the authorities played with us, they became our friends, but whenever they wanted something, they humiliated us.
Part III: Exodus
Not long before my displacement, I was attacked—punched in the face—as I was coming home from school on my motorbike after teaching, and there were many military men going in the same direction. They were headed back to their camp on foot after checking another village. I had come across a student of mine on the way who had some trouble walking because his left leg was a little bent and offered him a ride, so he was riding behind me on my bike. When we passed, a military officer, a captain, told me to stop. He was not one I knew from football, probably because he had too many responsibilities to play with the rest of the group. He told me to get off the bike. “Where are you from?” he asked, and I pointed to my village, which was close by. I told him, “I have been teaching for three years and as usual am coming back from my school.” He said, “I need your bike.” Normally, I would have just given him the bike, but this time I said, “Sir, the student who is riding with me is not physically strong; please let him ride with me.” He said, “Don’t bargain!” I was quiet. He asked me, “Give me your key.” So I gave him my key and took my student off the back of the bike. The captain could not ride the bike because it was a little bit different than other motorbikes: it is a Hi Bobo type bike. To stop, you pulled a wire system. It also had a leg brake. He tried to ride, but when he first got onto the bike, he fell off. I pulled him up and helped him up on the motorbike, but I said, “Sir, I think it is not possible for you because it is a different motorbike.” He said, “How dare you say that!” and he punched me in the face. Then I stayed quiet. He told me, “Tell me how to ride it.” I told him which was the hand brake and which was the leg brake. Then he rode very slowly, because he did not know how, and my student and I walked back to our village. This was on Thursday. On Sunday, I went to his shelter and asked for my bike back because the school week was starting, and he said I could take it.Rain and Migration
August 27, 2017, was not like a normal day. It was the rainy season. Because we had been hearing rumors, people in the village had been keeping watch until midnight. That meant that many would be sleeping at dawn, and the military knew this. My house was in the northern part of the village. I woke up and heard a woman scream, “They have killed my husband!” We could hear shots. They were coming from Da Gyi Zar [village] about half a kilometer (a quarter of a mile) to the south. Both my uncles and their wives and children were in the house with me. The only way we could escape was away from the main road. I grabbed my bag which had some clothes, cologne, and my cellphone, and asked my uncle to let me take one of the littlest children with me. He told me to just go, “Don’t come back—just go wherever you can go. We will take care of everything.” I could not take my bike over the trails across the countryside. There were crowds of people running together, but there was no time to look for friends or talk. Some people had taken their fathers on their backs and were running along with us. One young man carried his mother and father in baskets attached to a yoke. I was running in Panda sandals. We ran until we had passed three villages, and then we stopped. This village was more peaceful. People were offering water, fruit, snacks, dry clothes. I made conversation with one boy from Buthidaung town. He told me what had happened to their village. It was all part of the military’s plan. It had taken him twelve or thirteen days to get there. I asked what they had had to eat, and he said, “Leaves and salty water.” A few hours later, people started screaming that the military was entering the town. This time, they came from every direction except the west. We had nowhere to go except towards Bangladesh. Our target was to get to Balukhali because the military was catching up, running after us and threatening us. They had big guns and launchers of the type that can burn up a helicopter. It rained most of that night, and no one could really sleep. I slept in the hills with the men under a banyan tree, and the women slept nearby. People also slept under the mango and jackfruit trees, but neither of these bears fruit during the rainy season. People were crying because they were so hungry. A little boy about five or six years old went to gather some footigullah (the fruit of the melastoma tree). Footigullah is a tiny fruit with a red outside and black inside, that tastes sweet, like grapes. He took everything he found to his mother who was sick. I was surprised, because he was such a small kid, and I don’t know how hungry he was, but he did not eat even a single one—he just gave them all to her. In the morning, we started running again because the military had come. I saw many elderly people and young children. One of the women had to stop because she went into labor, but her husband kept running. The midwife stayed with her. In two days, we reached Balukhali and came back out onto the main route again by the Naf River, which separates Myanmar from Bangladesh. There were about sixty members of the military there, and I could see their faces. They were not doing anything—just watching us. I looked east, and wow—I have never seen so many people. The queue was as long as the eye could see. That night was really horrible. The winds were strong, and it was dangerous to cross the river. You had to pay the boatmen 100,000 kyats [more than one month’s salary, or about US $45] to cross. People who could pay, paid. Women gave their gold earrings. I gave them all I had, which was a gold ring with a small diamond-like stone. Many of the boats, called coracles, were so crammed with people that they capsized. Elderly people and children who could not swim, drowned, and the women also, weighed down with their clothes and hijabs. After we crossed and the border police let us in, Bangladeshi people came to welcome us with food, clothes, and even money. Then a yellow and white bus came. I had no money, but a man paid for many of us to ride with him and his family to the nearest camp. When I saw the camp, I felt really, really sad. Other Rohingya refugees from Myanmar had been living there since 1991. It was very hot. It was just a hut as if for animals. But at the same time that I was sad, I was thankful to Bangladesh and to Almighty Allah. I heard the Maghrib Salah [call to evening prayer] on a loudspeaker coming from the camp just after arriving. It’s a little bit different-sounding than in Myanmar. There, we were not allowed to use a microphone for prayers. After performing the evening prayer, I could finally call my uncle, and he told me that he and his family had crossed safely. When they arrived, some registered refugees welcomed us and took us to the mosque where we could stay the night. They took the women and children to another place. That night was really horrible. The roof was tin and the walls were made of bamboo, and we slept in our clothes on the concrete floor. It never stopped raining. I could not sleep well. I was worried about the people who were still crossing the border, and I kept remembering what I had seen and waking up again. I found out later that one of those who defended the village, Mohammed Salaam, had been shot dead from far away. Eleven people from my village, including a child, had been burned alive.Part IV: “Today’s Learner Is Tomorrow’s Leader”
We now had the answer to our questions about our future. We became Forcibly Displaced Myanmar Nationals (FDMNs). We cannot apply for refugee status because Myanmar revoked our citizenship. We cannot go home, and only a very few of us have been allowed to emigrate from Bangladesh. Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) was building a hospital in the camp, and I asked them to give me a job. They hired me to visit the camp blocks to talk to residents and find the best locations for washrooms and well taps for water. I was also a volunteer with the Danish Refugee Council (DRC), building shelters. The DRC provided tarpaulins, string, ropes, hooks, and bamboo, called “tie-down kits” and “shelter kits.” That first year in the camp, I made some friends who came from France, Italy, Germany, and America who were there with NGOs. We often had tea and birthday cake together, but when the projects ended, I didn’t have anything to do. I had seen that a lot of the children were playing in the street and screaming during what would be their study time. I realized that if they were in Myanmar, they would be in school. If I could build a school, then we could teach them. It was a really, really amazing idea for me and I could feel proud of myself. So I spoke with two qualified teachers and one block leader about it. They discouraged me and told me to forget it—that I would not get many teachers. I told my wife what I was thinking. She said, “How will you pay the teachers?” and I told her, “If we sell your gold jewelry, we could get two to three lakhs to run the school for at least one year.” “Will that be good for us?” she asked. I said, “No, it will not be good for us, but it will be wonderful for the whole community.” Then she agreed. When I met again with the teachers and the block leader, I told them I could pay. We went to a tea shop to discuss everything and formed a committee, including one female teacher. The block leader said, “I’m with you, but not financially.” Nonetheless, he motivated me. I got everybody’s consent to teach the Burmese curriculum, because we need to return to our country one day. We even suggested to the families that it would be better if they sent their children to school in a uniform. So some sold their rations to buy green and white uniforms from small shops in the camp. Our school opened its doors on January 11, 2019. We have over twenty-six teachers, including six lady teachers, and 935 students in grades 1–10. We even have some who are orphans. If today we can teach them something, then tomorrow, our young people will be leaders, because, you know, today’s learner is tomorrow’s leader. If we try, we will succeed, but we have to try hard.Methodology: Class Captain from Myanmar
Methodology: Our interviews have taken place completely in English recorded with an Olympus digital voice recorder. Siddique gave his verbal permission to me to record him. Siddique is highly fluent in English. This is partly thanks to his secondary education in Myanmar, but also because his parents and sisters, who work menial jobs in Saudia Arabia, paid for him to take a course in English in Bangladesh. As one may read in his account, he also took advantage of opportunities to practice his English with the workers from non-governmental organizations who speak it as well. The Rohingya language incorporates some English words into everyday expressions. Siddique and his colleagues record their students delivering speeches in English when they have something to say to a Western audience.Editing
I recorded what Siddique said for the first months after we began speaking and also took notes longhand. Not knowing where the story might go, I only knew that he had survived a genocide that he could remember and speak about clearly in English. A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Ba (Sarah Chrichton Books, 2007) served as a source of storytelling inspiration. From that book came the idea to find out more about the fun and “relatable” parts of Siddique’s life. I continued to record his verbal answers to questions, taking notes longhand and clarifying later by email or WhatsApp message. The structure of the story is the only part of the narrative that I altered. I kept Siddique’s exact wording wherever possible. Sometimes we would talk for a long period on a Friday evening, and I would write it up, and then more points would arise a month later, and I would insert the new information into the story where it best seemed to fit. For more information about the Rohingya, please visit Human Rights Watch at www.hrw.org/tag/rohingya/.