The Voices of the Victims: The Rohingyas and their "Subhuman" life

The Rohingyas, widely known as the world's most persecuted ethnic minority, experienced an unprecedented brutality committed by Myanmar security forces along in collaboration with some ethnic extremists and Buddhist fundamentalist. Under the pretext of counter insurgency following an alleged attack by ARSA on August 25, 2017 onwards, Myanmar security forces indiscriminately killed, randomly raped and intentionally burnt houses and properties of the civilian Rohingya people in Rakhine state. A report prepared by a three-member-panel appointed by the United Nations published in August 2018 showed that the brutal military crackdown in 2017 triggered an influx of 725,000 [until now 750,000] Rohingyas to Bangladesh, more than 10,000 were killed on the ground in the first two months, hundreds of girls and women were ganged raped, and around 392 villages were partially or totally destroyed. Combined with previous waves of refugees, now 1.3 million Rohingyas live in Ukhia and Teknaf refugee camps which are considered as the world's largest camps. The intensity of atrocity was so extreme that the UN Human Rights Council's Chief termed it as "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing" whilst many scholars and many credible media outlets called it "genocide."

Accounts gathered by Nasir Uddin from the Rohingyas living in Ukhia and Teknaf unfold the horrible ways they were dealt with as if they were lesser than human beings what Uddin terms "subhuman" life. This talk presents the first-hand narratives of the Rohingya refugees, the voices of the victims, in the broader spectrum of statelessness, refugeehood and human rights in the world.


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