LIVING IN THE SHOES A [ROHINGYA] REFUGEE
By Haikal Mansor
Imagine you were born in a privileged society enjoying all rights
Imagine you were forced to give up all the rights.
Imagine you were forced to live in the shoes of persecuted Rohingya.
Phase 1: GIVING UP OR DENAIL OF YOUR BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS
- Denounce your citizenship
- Abdicate your ethnicity
- Quit your job
- Discontinue your business
- Give up your houses and properties
- Relinquish your land
- Drop out of your school or college
- Lay off your basic human rights, i.e. freedom of movement, healthcare
- Separate from your children and family
Phase 2: LIVING WITHOUT THE BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS
- Attempt to survive without identity, home or job
- Prepare for most likely arrest, torture, forced-labour, harassment, sexual abuse
- Anticipate scapegoating, racism and human rights abuses
- Face state-sanctioned crimes against humanity or genocide
Phase 3: SEEKING A WAY OUT
- Borrow money
- Find a human trafficker
- Prepare food
- Pack a pair of clothes (if any)
- Aboard along with hundreds
- Set off your journey
Phase 4: PURSUING A SAFER PLACE
- Prepare to drift at sea for up to 2 months
- Avoid drinking sea water
- Sustain on your food
- Ward off diseases
- Prevent muscle-wasting
- Protect your privacy
- Defend yourself from harassment
- Pay ransom if demanded
- Throw dead bodies off the boat
- Confirm proper functioning of engine
- Pray for no cyclone or extreme weather
- Hope the boat not turn away by a country
Phase 5: LIVING A REFUGEE LIFE
- Rescue or receive permission to come ashore
- Find a temporary refuge
- Register as a refugee
- Get your hut built with tarpaulin and bamboo
- Receive ration twice in a month
- Live on rice, lentil, oil, salt, etc.
- Expect no freedom of movement, occasional internet blackouts
- Anticipate no formal school or education
- Encounter human or sex traffickers
- Predict possible landslide or cyclone
- Avoid outbreak of diseases
- Find no help for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
- Obtain no secondary or tertiary healthcare
- See no glimpse of hope returning to the former life
- Marry or raise a family as a refugee
- Reassure your children born as refugees ‘Tomorrow will be a better day’
- Ask yourself ‘Why am I treated like a sub-human?’
- Tell the world that ‘I want my rights back’
- Expect politicians still not finding solutions
- Keep hope alive
- Keep your family alive
- Keep yourself alive
- If not, you will die as unknown, unheard, undignified, unfulfilled.
WISH NO ONE’S RIGHTS ARE TAKEN AWAY.
WISH NO ONE IS FORCED TO FLEE HOME.
WISH NO ONE IS FORCED TO LIVE IN THE SHOES OF A REFUGEE.
Written and created by Haikal Mansor
Produced by The European Rohingya Council
