A Lifetime of Suffering
“If we couldn’t have made our way here,” he added, “we would have been killed like stray dogs.” Oli explained how, throughout his life, the Rohingya were always denied even the most basic rights and freedoms. “Our movement was restricted. There was a curfew – 6pm to 6am. And a ban on people gathering. And a ban on religious practices. If they saw people gather outside, either they disappeared them or killed them. There was no peace.” For Gul, though, no matter the hardships, she was grateful to be surrounded by the family members who’d fled to safety with her. Still, she knew she was nearing the end of her life. “I want to die where there is peace,” she told me. “I want to die where my parents died.” Meeting and interviewing Gul had a profound impact on me – the kind of impact that’s hard to put into words. On subsequent reporting trips to Cox’s Bazar, my team and I would make time to drop by and visit her. And the kindness she and the rest of her family showed us was truly humbling. I also tried to stay in touch with Gul from afar - but language barriers and the extremely difficult logistics of life in a refugee camp made that very difficult.
In all, I’ve made four separate reporting trips to Cox’s Bazar for Al Jazeera English. It’s because the network’s commitment to always place people at the heart of the story, that I have been able to bear witness, collect testimonies, and shine a light on the massive amount of suffering the Rohingya have endured. It’s the reason I was able to meet and learn so much from Gul. In December 2020, I got the very sad news that Gul had passed away the previous July. It hit me hard. I thought a lot about all she had told and taught me about the plight of her people. Looking back on it all, I think Gul realised how unlikely it was that her wish - to be able to die in her homeland - would come true. But that doesn’t make the fact that Gul - a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother who’d suffered decades of repression and abuse - passed away in a refugee camp, where conditions are as dire as they come, any less heartbreaking.
The more time we spent with Gul, the more it became clear how her experiences, and the experiences of her family, had mirrored what happened to so many other Rohingya who’d faced decades of repression and abuse. The Rohingya aren’t just the world’s largest group of stateless people, they’re also among the world’s most persecuted minorities. Gul’s son, Oli Ahmed, recalled the sheer terror of what happened when Myanmar’s military descended upon them in 2017. “They set the village ablaze,” said Oli, “firing on people, killing people. They cut people. They slaughtered people. And we escaped out of fear.”
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