The UN and humanitarian sector rarely push back strongly enough or at all. They often capitulate to do one task, the basic task of providing food and shelter. To do that they will often accept quite serious violations of the rest of their mandate. I feel like there's a real question about that when the Rohingya have participated in force repatriations. If you don't solve the problem it's one they will remain vulnerable.
The Rohingya people of Myanmar have been persecuted for decades. The worst period of violence flared up in August 2017, when almost 700,000 Rohingya were forced to leave Myanmar after a large-scale military operation. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was in power at the time. Today very few members of this Muslim minority remain in the country. Instead they live mostly in Bangladesh’s refugee camps, or, precariously, in Malaysia, India, Thailand, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. What does it mean for an entire people to be living in exile? Journalist Kaamil Ahmed has spent years trying to answer that question, which forms the themes of his new book, I Feel No Peace: Rohingya Fleeing Over Seas and Rivers, while trying to reveal the extraordinary resilience that has helped these scattered communities survive. Our host for this discussion is Carl Miller, author and Research Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos.
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