NIKKEI ASIA
FIONA MACGREGOR,
April 5, 2023
Kaamil Ahmed's 'I Feel No Peace' exposes prejudice and lack of interest
Rohingya women and children rest on the beach after their boat landed in Aceh province, Indonesia, in February 2023. Many women and girls from this ethnic minority group flee Myanmar and Bangladesh by boat only to find new perils await. © Reuters
Amid escalating security and social problems and waning interest among international aid donors, nearly 1 million Rohingya minority Muslims are languishing in one of the world's biggest refugee settlements at Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh. A new book provides a timely expose of the inattention and prejudices that have exacerbated the immense suffering of this ethnic minority.
"I Feel No Peace: Rohingya Fleeing Over Seas and Rivers," by Kaamil Ahmed, a journalist at The Guardian newspaper in London, widens the lens from the abuses inflicted on the Rohingya in their Myanmar homeland and the military violence there, which forced around 730,000 people into Bangladesh in 2017, following earlier migration waves. Through individuals' stories and wider context, this new work illustrates how rights violations against the Rohingya did not end when they crossed that and other national borders in search of safety.
The title is a translation of a Rohingya expression of despair that Ahmed reports hearing all too often during the many interviews he has conducted in different countries over the past eight years: Oshanti Lage -- a phrase that conveys the ongoing absence of shanti (peace) from which many Rohingya say they continue to suffer regardless of where they have ended up.
The book opens in Tuala Toli, a village in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state whose name will be forever associated with the brutality of military personnel and their civilian supporters who butchered and raped its Rohingya inhabitants. We are introduced to Momatz, a former resident of that ill-fated community.
Momatz's burned face, and her shocking story of rapes and other violence that killed countless neighbors and left her brutalized and her young daughter with a machete wound in her head, appeared in newspapers across the world. She became emblematic of what happened to the Rohingya people in 2017 during what the Myanmar government euphemistically referred to as "clearance operations." In reality, it was a campaign of genocidal ethnic cleansing which Myanmar's leader, the onetime peace heroine and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, would later deny had occurred.
The title is a translation of a Rohingya expression of despair that Ahmed reports hearing all too often during the many interviews he has conducted in different countries over the past eight years: Oshanti Lage -- a phrase that conveys the ongoing absence of shanti (peace) from which many Rohingya say they continue to suffer regardless of where they have ended up.
The book opens in Tuala Toli, a village in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state whose name will be forever associated with the brutality of military personnel and their civilian supporters who butchered and raped its Rohingya inhabitants. We are introduced to Momatz, a former resident of that ill-fated community.
Momatz's burned face, and her shocking story of rapes and other violence that killed countless neighbors and left her brutalized and her young daughter with a machete wound in her head, appeared in newspapers across the world. She became emblematic of what happened to the Rohingya people in 2017 during what the Myanmar government euphemistically referred to as "clearance operations." In reality, it was a campaign of genocidal ethnic cleansing which Myanmar's leader, the onetime peace heroine and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, would later deny had occurred.
Ahmed's description of the dismay with which Suu Kyi's words at the International Court of Justice in The Hague were received by Rohingya -- watching on a rare internet connection from the camps in Bangladesh -- encapsulates the mounting sense of betrayal he records throughout this work. This was the ultimate public evidence of the Rohingya being let down by so many of those in positions of power who have refused to acknowledge the extent of their suffering.
"All the hope these hearings had offered, the excitement at the prospect of justice, instantly evaporated. Anger bubbled in the camps, growing with each word of genocide denial uttered by the woman who was supposed to be the country's hope," Ahmed writes.
Suu Kyi's heartless complicity in military mass-atrocities made international headlines and ruined her reputation among all but her Myanmar devotees. She is now being held captive by the same generals she defended at The Hague after they seized power and imprisoned her and other leaders of the incumbent National League for Democracy government.
But Ahmed also details lesser-known complicities and betrayals of the Rohingya by other international representatives, including United Nations officials, who have often prioritized pragmatism and diplomacy over human rights and basic dignity. In doing so, this book identifies a critically important issue that has all too often been overlooked by other observers.
"All the hope these hearings had offered, the excitement at the prospect of justice, instantly evaporated. Anger bubbled in the camps, growing with each word of genocide denial uttered by the woman who was supposed to be the country's hope," Ahmed writes.
Suu Kyi's heartless complicity in military mass-atrocities made international headlines and ruined her reputation among all but her Myanmar devotees. She is now being held captive by the same generals she defended at The Hague after they seized power and imprisoned her and other leaders of the incumbent National League for Democracy government.
But Ahmed also details lesser-known complicities and betrayals of the Rohingya by other international representatives, including United Nations officials, who have often prioritized pragmatism and diplomacy over human rights and basic dignity. In doing so, this book identifies a critically important issue that has all too often been overlooked by other observers.
Drawing on both past events and ongoing practices, Ahmed challenges the simplistic diplomatic narrative which continues to paint Bangladesh as a heroic nation for taking in refugees while ignoring both the country's historical role as a contributor to Rohingya oppression and the rising toll of rights violations inflicted on those refugees now residing there.
In a world where the same wealthy states that played key roles in establishing international law are now blatantly willing to ignore the key principals of human rights and international law on refugees, Bangladesh's ongoing sheltering of such a sizeable refugee population ostensibly represents an admirable role model.
Nevertheless, as Ahmed makes clear, much of the misery the Rohingya in Bangladesh endure could be mitigated were they not prevented from enjoying the basic human right of freedom of movement and allowed to create their own livelihoods rather than being imprisoned behind barbed wire, denied the right to work and left to rely on food aid indefinitely.
Addressing the ever-present threat of refoulement (forcible return to their country of origin) Ahmed reminds readers of the horrors inflicted on Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh in the late 1970s, when an estimated 12,000 people died after the authorities cut food rations as part of a bid to drive them back to Myanmar. The U.N. stood by and watched.
He then recounts the shocking disregard that U.N. officials have shown more recently for including Rohingya in discussions about repatriation: making pacts with Myanmar and Bangladesh without including the refugee population; blase approaches to information sharing that contributed to terror and even suicide attempts among refugees fearing forced return to Myanmar; and ongoing efforts to dismiss refugee civil society leaders as "unrepresentative."
There is something deeply moving in the accumulated stories Ahmed recounts of hopes dashed over and over again and the general dismissiveness with which their experiences are met by those with political power and influence.
Knowing the deadly fate that awaited the dignified Rohingya leader Mohib Ullah in 2021 at the hands of a political assassination mob, it is distressing to be reminded of the careless way he was treated when he met U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington in 2019. When Mohib told Trump how much he wanted to go home, the American leader asked "where is that exactly?"
However, it is even more jarring to recall the way in which Mohib's presentation to the U.N. was cut off in the middle of a speech he had worked hard to put together. As Ahmed points out, even as a genocide survivor representing some of the world's most marginalized people, the U.N.'s rigid protocol enforcers refused to allow Mohib more than his allotted two minutes on the Geneva stage.
"This was the world in which the Rohingya had believed decisions were made, where their testimonies, collected by diplomats and researchers, were filed. [Mohib Ullah] had visited this world now and found no answers. No one was even talking about them."
There is something deeply moving in the accumulated stories Ahmed recounts of hopes dashed over and over again and the general dismissiveness with which their experiences are met by those with political power and influence.
Knowing the deadly fate that awaited the dignified Rohingya leader Mohib Ullah in 2021 at the hands of a political assassination mob, it is distressing to be reminded of the careless way he was treated when he met U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington in 2019. When Mohib told Trump how much he wanted to go home, the American leader asked "where is that exactly?"
However, it is even more jarring to recall the way in which Mohib's presentation to the U.N. was cut off in the middle of a speech he had worked hard to put together. As Ahmed points out, even as a genocide survivor representing some of the world's most marginalized people, the U.N.'s rigid protocol enforcers refused to allow Mohib more than his allotted two minutes on the Geneva stage.
"This was the world in which the Rohingya had believed decisions were made, where their testimonies, collected by diplomats and researchers, were filed. [Mohib Ullah] had visited this world now and found no answers. No one was even talking about them."
Ahmed also addresses Bangladesh's sustained refusal to recognize the presence of Rohingya political and criminal armed groups in the camps -- including the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, whose name is associated with attacks on security posts in Myanmar in 2016 and 2017 -- and the U.N.'s complicity in covering up the dangers these groups pose to regular camp residents.
Bangladesh has had obvious reasons for denying the existence of these groups, whose presence could only hamper repatriation efforts by fueling Myanmar propaganda about Rohingya "Muslim terrorists" being a threat to the nation. But the U.N.'s willingness to go along with such denials has arguably contributed to the impunity that has enabled these groups' violent activities to flourish on their current deadly scale. It is unfortunate that more of Ahmed's valid criticisms of U.N. officials are not more clearly referenced.
A key chapter focuses on the lives of the many Rohingya who have ended up in Malaysia -- particularly the plight of those men and women in the hands of traffickers, extorters and slavers -- including those whose bodies remain in unnamed graves there and in neighboring Thailand, through which so many were trafficked.
It also highlights the difficult lives of the girls and women who take the dangerous sea route from Bangladesh and Myanmar in the hope of finding security in marriage to one of the Rohingya men who traveled to Malaysia in earlier waves of migration. Very few, as Ahmed vividly recounts, find the shanti, the peace, they are looking for at the other side. Far too many do not survive the journey at all.
Bangladesh has had obvious reasons for denying the existence of these groups, whose presence could only hamper repatriation efforts by fueling Myanmar propaganda about Rohingya "Muslim terrorists" being a threat to the nation. But the U.N.'s willingness to go along with such denials has arguably contributed to the impunity that has enabled these groups' violent activities to flourish on their current deadly scale. It is unfortunate that more of Ahmed's valid criticisms of U.N. officials are not more clearly referenced.
A key chapter focuses on the lives of the many Rohingya who have ended up in Malaysia -- particularly the plight of those men and women in the hands of traffickers, extorters and slavers -- including those whose bodies remain in unnamed graves there and in neighboring Thailand, through which so many were trafficked.
It also highlights the difficult lives of the girls and women who take the dangerous sea route from Bangladesh and Myanmar in the hope of finding security in marriage to one of the Rohingya men who traveled to Malaysia in earlier waves of migration. Very few, as Ahmed vividly recounts, find the shanti, the peace, they are looking for at the other side. Far too many do not survive the journey at all.
Rohingya children play at a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar on March 15. © Getty Images
Ahmed is to be commended for including influential and inspiring Rohingya women among his subjects and for ensuring that the women he reports on who suffered conflict-related and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence are shown as multifaceted people with agency, and not solely as pitiful victims.
Naturally, this is not an uplifting read. Yet it is a worthwhile one. The book offers no dramatic revelations, but in bringing these stories together in a single volume the journalist has done something particularly important: not so much by sharing the horrifying testimonies of tortures, killings, trafficking, slavery and rapes by the numerous villains who have exploited and abused the Rohingya over decades, but by recounting the endless litany of letdowns inflicted on the Rohingya by those who had the opportunity to offer them dignity and hope.
Remarkably, given his subject matter, Ahmed manages to end the book on a not entirely downbeat note. Returning to Momatz he finds her, if not happy, then happier and with some hope for the future of her newborn infant. That she should have managed to recover this much is a testament not to the international representatives who seek to present themselves as "protectors" of Rohingya survivors, but to her own enduring spirit.
In February, yet another huge fire in the Cox's Bazar camps left an estimated 12,000 Rohingya without shelter. The World Food Organization, citing funding shortages, had just cut the already meager rice ration for camp inhabitants to $10 a month from $12, with further reductions pending. This came amid mounting local news reports of the growing incidence of murders and violence by criminal gangs in and around the camps.
The problems highlighted in "I Feel No Peace" are not going to end anytime soon, and in many ways are worsening. For those seeking to understand why, Ahmed's book offers some important insights.
Naturally, this is not an uplifting read. Yet it is a worthwhile one. The book offers no dramatic revelations, but in bringing these stories together in a single volume the journalist has done something particularly important: not so much by sharing the horrifying testimonies of tortures, killings, trafficking, slavery and rapes by the numerous villains who have exploited and abused the Rohingya over decades, but by recounting the endless litany of letdowns inflicted on the Rohingya by those who had the opportunity to offer them dignity and hope.
Remarkably, given his subject matter, Ahmed manages to end the book on a not entirely downbeat note. Returning to Momatz he finds her, if not happy, then happier and with some hope for the future of her newborn infant. That she should have managed to recover this much is a testament not to the international representatives who seek to present themselves as "protectors" of Rohingya survivors, but to her own enduring spirit.
In February, yet another huge fire in the Cox's Bazar camps left an estimated 12,000 Rohingya without shelter. The World Food Organization, citing funding shortages, had just cut the already meager rice ration for camp inhabitants to $10 a month from $12, with further reductions pending. This came amid mounting local news reports of the growing incidence of murders and violence by criminal gangs in and around the camps.
The problems highlighted in "I Feel No Peace" are not going to end anytime soon, and in many ways are worsening. For those seeking to understand why, Ahmed's book offers some important insights.
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