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https://reasonstobecheerful.world/with-cameras-and-confidence-rohingya-refugees-are-sharing-their-own-stories/>
"In the summer of 2017, when Ishrat Bibi passed her matriculation exams in
Myanmar, her brother gifted her a smartphone. His gift would change Bibi’s
life.
“I immediately started taking photos of our daily lives in Myanmar, and months
later, when we were forced to flee our homes on 25th August 2017, I took photos
of our exodus,” she says. “My family asked, why are you taking pictures of our
misery? But I wanted a record of our memories; I knew that someday, these would
define our history.”
Bibi and her family were among the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims
who fled to Bangladesh in August 2017 amid the deadly crackdown on their
villages by Myanmar’s army — a case of alleged genocide which is currently
being debated in the International Court of Justice. When they reached the
refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, a city in southern Bangladesh, after a perilous
river crossing, she found she was not alone: there were other young Rohingya
shutterbugs in the camp, trying to come to terms with, and share, what their
displaced existence was really like.
In 2021, led by fellow camp resident Sahat Zia Hero, and supported by Spanish
producer David Palazón, the group created Rohingyatographer, a community-led
nonprofit photographers collective and magazine published twice a year, which
shows the reality of the Rohingya experience, through their own lenses and
eyes.
“The camera helped us, and continues to help us, to show the world the reality
of our lives in the refugee camp in a way that outsiders can’t do,” says Hero.
“They don’t have the time to experience our life. But me? When I take photos of
the ongoing food crisis in the Bangladesh camps, I’m hungry too…”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
