Shafiur Rahman
18 February 2020
In Bangladesh, 'Smart Cards' have become essential for refugees' survival.
A Rohingya woman from Myanmar holds a SweTinSit photo. Seven of the people pictured were killed in military “clearance operations’’ in northern Rakhine state in August 2017. Photo courtesy of Shafiur Rahman.
Taslima was dreading the day. It was SweTinSit, an annual population census conducted by Myanmar government officials in northern Rakhine state. Military, police and customs officials would be sweeping through, collecting data on Rohingya families – monitoring the birth of children, photographing family members and listing their names. This was in 2016, when tensions in Rakhine were escalating.