By Shibani Mahtani
Photojournalist Greg Constantine has spent the past seven years documenting the world’s stateless, from the Bihari people in Bangladesh and the Dalit in Nepal, to ex-Soviets living in Ukraine.
But in all his travels, one region and one group of people in particular has captured his attention the most: The Rohingya, whose situation he describes as “darkest and most dire.” Now released as a book, his collection of photos – entitled “Exiled to Nowhere” – allows outsiders a snapshot into the lives of what human rights groups consider some of the most grave and under-reported case of human rights abuses in the world.
Largely unwanted in Myanmar and neighboring Bangladesh, the plight of the Rohingya – a Muslim minority group living in Myanmar’s Rakhine state and in parts of Bangladesh – came into international focus in June when communal violence erupted across Western Myanmar, leaving at least 78 people dead.
Though the violence has cooled down and services have reopened in Rakhine state, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, over 70,000 Rohingya continue to be displaced with little access to food, water or sanitation. Fears run high that violence could resume, potentially posing a major challenge to Myanmar’s reformist government as it seeks to turn the page on decades of military rule and open the country more to the outside world.
- Greg Constantine
- A group of Rohingya men are detained at a highway checkpoint in southern Bangladesh.
Accounts of who the Rohingya are and when they settled in the region are disputed, with some historians saying that Muslim influence in Western Myanmar goes as far back as 1430 A.D. Others see the Rohingya as a new immigrant group with limited roots in the area, after moving to places like Western Myanmar during the days of British colonial control.
When Myanmar became an independent nation, the Rohingya weren’t granted citizenship, and tensions periodically flared as Myanmar’s previous military regime sought to push them out of the country. Some settled in refugee camps in Bangladesh, while others remained in Myanmar, albeit without citizenship and with their movements restricted.
Many of the Rohingya don’t have access to education, permission to work or freedom of movement, rights advocates say. In essence, they are trapped in a no-man’s land – stuck in dire circumstances where they live, and without passports to travel elsewhere.
Mr. Constantine made more than eight trips to Bangladesh over the past six years, chronicling the lives of the community in camps in southern Bangladesh. (Visiting Rohingyas in Myanmar was more difficult at the time because of the country’s military regime, which blocked foreign journalists from reporting there).
His photos, shot in black and white, capture the sense of hopelessness that pervades many Rohingya settlements. In one image, two children scamper barefoot through a narrow passageway between refugee tents that’s been flooded by water from open sewers.
In other photos, refugees are seen living in huts made of twigs, mud and leaves, while children take classes in makeshift madrassas under plastic sheets held up with bamboo. Women march with their infant children to a nearby community to beg for food, while men head to sea as bonded labor on fishing boats. One set of images documents the death and burial of a 15-year-old who died from typhoid in a hut made of tarp and wood strips, with no sign of medical care in sight.
“No one wants [the Rohingya] to begin with, which is a question I’m still trying to find an answer to,” said Mr. Constantine. “The desperate situation they encounter in Burma and that follows them in most other places demands that they cross borders as a means to survive [and] provide for their families.”
Bangladeshi authorities have said they lack the resources to handle all the Rohingya, especially given all the other pressing needs in the country. Myanmar officials say they have built relief camps to help Rohingyas in conjunction with international aid agencies, and that they have taken steps to restore peace in areas affected by the recent violence in Rohingya areas.
“Myanmar totally rejects the attempts by some quarters to politicize and internationalize this situation as a religious issue,” the Myanmar Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement released Monday. “Myanmar is a multi-religious country where Buddhists, Christians, Muslims and Hindus have been living together in peace and harmony for centuries, hence those recent incidents (that) occurred in the Rakhine State are neither because of religious oppression nor discrimination,” it added.
The statement came as a United Nations human rights expert, Tomas Ojea Quintana, began a weeklong visit to Myanmar on Monday that is expected to include a visit to Rohingya areas.
Earlier this month, Myanmar’s president Thein Sein told U.N. officials that a long-term solution to Rohingya tensions would be to send the Rohingya to a third country – not Bangladesh or Myanmar – or have the U.N. look after them instead. The U.N. rejected the idea.
Human rights advocates argue that it’s not just official sentiment towards the Rohingya that needs to change, but also popular opinions that view them in some cases as sub-human. Some residents in Myanmar have referred to them as “terrorists,” “dogs,” “cows” or other pejorative terms.
“There is a lot of straight-forward racism” towards the Rohingya, said Phil Robertson, deputy director for Asia at Human Rights Watch.
As the world pays closer attention to Myanmar these days after a year of far-reaching political and economic reforms in the country, Mr. Constantine hopes his work will remind people of the hardships Rohingya residents still endure as the West lifts its sanctions against Myanmar.
“I hope that my work… can help contribute something important to the understanding people and policy makers have about the Rohingya at this crucial moment,” he said.
Read more about the Exiled to Nowhere project and Greg Constantinehere. Exiled to Nowhere is available for purchase here.
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