Mumtaz and her sister had a very similar experience, but photographed and interviewed a lot once by people who never came back. And they don't know what happened with any of that. My aim was to put together a book that gives a better understanding of the systematic issues here That threw their stories at me. I think it's more difficult if you feel like there's no purpose to it. It also sometimes shows to me that if you talk to someone, get their trauma, get their story and then put it into a quote and then move on is also exploitative.
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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