Kite Tales co-founder takes on Myanmar racism with powerful storytelling

Daw Aye Khin, also known as Begum, was the first Rohingya Thin Lei Win interviewed in 2011. Photo: Thin Lei Win
Daw Aye Khin, also known as Begum, was the first Rohingya Thin Lei Win interviewed in 2011. Photo: Thin Lei Win

“My heart has been breaking in the past few weeks,” writes Myanmar journalist Thin Lei Win in a Facebook post that has been shared hundreds of times since Sunday. This response is remarkable because the heartbreak she describes is of the sort that  many people in Myanmar prefer to ignore.

In her post, Thin Lei Win describes the pain of seeing friends and family express racist attitudes toward the Rohingya, a Muslim minority whose plight has captured the world’s attention since August 25, when the Myanmar army began its response to what it calls “extremist terrorist” attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA).

That response has been labelled “ethnic cleansing” by rights groups and foreign governments. Nonetheless, Myanmar’s leaders and their heavy-handed military behavior continue to enjoy the support of most people in the country.

This loud majority, according to Thin Lei Win, conflates innocent Rohingya civilians with “terrorists,” refuses to recognize the humanitarian crisis in Rakhine State that disproportionately affects the Rohingya, and accuses those who report on Rohingya suffering of accepting bribes from “rich Muslims.”

To Thin Lei Win, who has previously demonstrated the power of deep, personal storytelling as a co-founder of The Kite Tales and of the news site Myanmar Now, at the root of all the insensitivity and hatred in Myanmar today is the fact that most people here have had no contact with the people they have been told to fear.

“What struck me about all those posts and comments was how very, very few of them have actually met, let alone spoke to, the Rohingya, the group they don’t hesitate to demonize,” she writes in the post.

Therefore, she has set out to draw on her personal experiences with hundreds of Rohingya to tell stories that her compatriots would not hear otherwise.

Here’s her first story:

This is Waadulae (pictured here), a 16-year-old boy who was dying from rabies at Da Paing hospital, the only medical clinic open to Rohingya in the camps near Sittwe. After the 2012 violence, Rohingya were banished from Sittw,e and Waadulae could not seek help there.

We met him on our second day visiting the displacement camps in April 2013. He was having seizures when we turned up at the clinic. A slight kid, he became so strong while convulsing that six of his family members had to hold him down so he won’t hurt himself or others and wedged a stick between his teeth to stop him from biting his tongue.

There were no vaccines or doctors here. Only one medical worker seeing about 150 patients a day. He said Waadulae was beyond help, and the only thing they could do was to give him sedatives.

The comments under Thin Lei Win’s post are a mixed bag, which is impressive, considering the wall of hostility she seeks to breach. There are veteran journalists who commend her for offering a rare voice of reason:

There are also those who take an “All Lives Matter” approach and find offense in the claim that the suffering of the Rohingya is unique:

But most important are the responses from the previously silent skeptics who now feel emboldened to question what they’ve been hearing from the government and the military:

Read Thin Lei Win’s post in full here (an English translation is in the comments), and follow forthcoming stories in this series, titled The Rohingya I’ve Met.

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