Burma's Muslim Rohingya: On the Run From Oppression

Mother Jones
Photos by Saiful Huq Omi/Magnum Foundation

Saiful Huq Omi, a photographer based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, first focused on Burma's Rohingya refugees in 2009, when he began documenting their lives in Bangladesh, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom. The Rohingya—an ethnic, religious, and linguistic minority from Burma's northern Rakhine State—have been persecuted for decades; nearly a million of them are estimated to reside in Burma, while another half million have sought refuge in Bangladesh. Smaller populations have fled to other countries.

The 1982 Citizenship Law of Burma stripped the Rohingya of their nationality, making them legally stateless. As Amal de Chickera, the head of the Statelessness and Nationality Projects for the Equal Rights Trust, explained in a recent conversation with Omi: "While many individual citizens of Burma experience human rights violations, the Rohingya are specifically targeted and face discrimination as a group. Outside of Burma most Rohingya are irregular migrants with no legal status. Because they are stateless they have to travel illegally, and are thus targeted and often become victims of arbitrary detention, deportation, extortion, trafficking, and smuggling."

What Omi found especially striking from his encounters with the Rohingya was a pervasive and enduring sense of uncertainty among them about having no country to call home. How have these people coped with that agony for so many years? "Other than the resettled community in Bradford, UK," he says, "no one knew their future."

These photographs were taken between 2009 and 2011. Beginning in late May, Omi will travel again to various Rohingya enclaves to continue the documentary project.

"When it rains in the unregistered camps, the walkways become little rivers and there is a risk of landslide. But many Rohingyas feel they do not have any other place to go. They live a life of fear—of being mistreated by the local Bangladeshis, of starvation, of being forced to return to Burma, where they face oppression."

See the photo essay here.

Photo and Caption Credits

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Comment: I am very bothered by Aung San Suu Kyi's consistent refusal to speak to the plight of the Rohingya in Burma.

In recent months she has been given the floor all over the west and not a word of concern has come forth from her.

I think the time has come to call her on her apparent duplicity.  

Democracy and freedom are not only good for some.

The Rohingya are being persecuted because they are Muslim and their plight deserves an international spotlight.

Where is the outrage?

Onward!