WRITTEN BY FARIHA AFROSE, MASTER’S STUDENT, ÅBO AKADEMI UNIVERSITY
When I first started working with the Rohingya community, I thought I understood what it meant to be marginalized or excluded. But nothing could have prepared me for the stories I would hear, the unimaginable pain I would witness, and the extraordinary resilience I would come to admire. The Rohingya are not just excluded from Myanmar; they are excluded from the world. Imagine fleeing your home in fear, leaving behind everything and everyone you know, not even sure if another country will open its borders to you. Many Rohingya families fled Myanmar with no idea where they would go or whether they would find safety. They were caught in limbo—stateless, homeless, and invisible. The world watched, questioning the very foundation of basic human rights. Are they reserved only for the powerful?
I will never forget the first day I worked with the Rohingya community. My job was to support unaccompanied and separated children. Among them was a boy who had witnessed his family’s brutal murder. A neighbour who didn’t want to care for him brought him to the camp. The boy didn’t speak a word, his small body frozen in shock. I tried to connect with him, offering psychosocial first aid to break the ice. But he didn’t respond. Then, without warning, he collapsed. A crowd gathered, and someone whispered, “He’s dead.” My heart sank with guilt and helplessness. A psychiatrist later explained that the boy’s young mind couldn’t process the trauma he had endured. His brain had shut down, and eventually, so did his body. The psychiatrist said something I will never forget: “He died mentally the day he saw his family killed. His body just followed.” This story was not unique. Almost every Rohingya child I met carried deep, unprocessed trauma. Their mental health had been numbed by relentless suffering.
Life in the camp offered little relief. Families were packed into tiny spaces, leaving them with no privacy. Seven or eight people shared rooms that were barely big enough for one person. This crowded living situation created a sad reality: even in these shelters, children were not safe. One case that still haunts me was of a three-year-old girl raped by her uncle. Her mother didn’t come to us for justice—she came only for medical help. When I gently suggested seeking legal support, her response was devastating:
“We lost all our rights the day we were born as Rohingya. What justice is left for us?”
The Rohingya community’s tragic story took a catastrophic turn in 1982 with the enactment of Myanmar’s Citizenship Law. This law erased their legal identity, stripping them of every fundamental right. From that moment, their struggle for survival became a fight against systemic exclusion, persecution, and violence. I met a boy who wanted to be an engineer. He was brilliant but faced many challenges in a system that hurt his dreams. In Myanmar, Rohingya children often do not succeed in school. Teachers from military-aligned communities gave them low grades on purpose to push them out of education. Although he tried hard and changed schools many times, he eventually left the system. He told me:
“No Rohingya can finish school in Myanmar. Those who left early are lucky. They live better lives abroad. Why would they come back to this suffering?”
In 2017, when violence in Myanmar increased, many Rohingya people had to flee to Bangladesh for safety. However, Bangladesh did not give them official refugee status. This lack of status denied them basic human rights. They could not move freely within the refugee camps and could not work. Without jobs or activities to engage in, some turned to smuggling and other illegal activities to survive. At the same time, incidents of gender-based violence (GBV) increased in the camps. Women and girls faced harassment and abuse here, both physical and mental, similar to what they experienced in Myanmar. The overcrowded camps lacked proper security and privacy, making them very dangerous. I heard how women were always at risk—not just in their homes but even when trying to use the bathroom at night. Most women and girls told me they felt the same fear in Bangladesh as they did in Myanmar. “Where can we ever live without fear? Is this life?” they asked. There is no light, no humanity—only silence.
One man once said to me, “We are uneducated and uncivilized, that’s why we suffer. The world sees us as wild. But your world knows justice and ethics. So where is your education that spreads justice? Do you have any answer?”
I had no answer. Perhaps no one does.
