By RISHABH R. JAIN
 |
Rahima Akter, 19 yrs, walks through Balukhali refugee
camp in Bangladesh. 27
Aug 2018 (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)
|
KUTUPALONG, Bangladesh (AP) — At an age when many young Rohingya women have children, Rahima Akter has other plans.
From the refugee camp in southern Bangladesh where she
was born, Akter, a 19-year-old with a confident smile who goes by the name
Khushi, says she aspires to become the most educated Rohingya woman in the
world.
Akter was born and has lived her whole life in the camp,
a makeshift settlement of bamboo and tarpaulin huts spread out over rolling
hills that were once protected forestland.
Her parents were among a wave of 250,000 Rohingya Muslims
who escaped forced labor, religious persecution and violent attacks from
Buddhist mobs in Myanmar during the early 1990s.
She sees education as her ticket out of the camp.
“If we take education then we will be able to lead our
life as a life,” she said.
Akter has supplemented her family’s income by working as
a translator for aid groups and journalists responding to a new influx of
Rohingya refugees who have flooded the camp since August 2017, when the Myanmar
military and Buddhist mobs began “clearance operations” against Rohingya in
retaliation for insurgent attacks on security posts in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
https://youtu.be/jZKgFMj-Lmc
A United Nations fact-finding mission reported last month
that at least 10,000 Rohingya are believed to have died in the violence. The
U.N. has called for Myanmar’s top military generals to be prosecuted for
genocide and crimes against humanity.
But while the Rohingya have found a measure of safety in
southern Bangladesh, access to education is far from assured.
Akter said she is among only a few Rohingya refugee girls
to have completed the Bangladeshi equivalent of high school, a feat she could
only achieve by sneaking past the camp’s checkpoints and bribing Bangladeshi
public school officials for a placement.
More than 1,200 temporary schools teach English, math,
Burmese, science and the arts to about 140,000 children between the ages of 6
and 14, just over a quarter of the more than half a million refugee children
living in the camp, according to UNICEF.
But the schooling only goes up to 5th grade, so Akter and
other refugees have had to secretly enroll in schools in Cox’s Bazar or other
towns to complete their studies.
Because of the limited educational opportunities for
them, UNICEF calls the refugee children “a lost generation.”
“The international community has failed these children,”
UNICEF spokesman Sakil Faizullah said, adding that the agency plans to start
offering basic classes for older refugee students on the assumption they will
receive formal education when they return to Myanmar.
But in the current anti-Rohingya climate in Myanmar,
Akter said her family’s return has not been possible.
In order to go to school, Akter said she disguised her
Rohingya identity by speaking only in Bengali, and dressing like a Bangladeshi
girl.
But it was the battles she had to fight at home that were
the most challenging, she said.
Most Rohingya girls are expected to get married by the
age of 16, and sometimes as early as 14. She had to fight off her father who
said her time for marriage had come.
Akter cried for days and begged her parents with hands
clasped to let her continue studying.
Her mother, Minara Begum, a refugee who fled Myanmar as a
child and never attended school, not only convinced her husband to let their
eldest daughter study, but also fought off rebukes from the elders in her
community who warned that sending girls out into the world was a sin.
“I told them ‘let Allah punish me then,’” Begum said.
“What about our lives as refugees that have gone in vain because of our
illiteracy? If I can help my children get a better future by education, then
that is what I am going to do.”
Begum now sends three of her four daughters to school and
hopes to educate her youngest daughter and only son as well. Akter and two of
her sisters live on their own near the school in Cox’s Bazar, about two hours’
drive from the camp. Akter’s sisters were able to enroll in the Bangladeshi
school after she had secured a place for herself there.
Begum said the family has skimped on food to cover the
costs of sending the children to school, hoping that they can build a future
for themselves that is not bound by the stigma of being a refugee.
“We are Rohingya. There is no land under our feet. We
have no future. We are in the same situation as chicken in a cage,” Begum said,
adding that they “can’t even claim ownership over the fruit from a tree that we
planted.”
Begum’s dedication to her children’s education seems to
be paying off already. Akter now earns more money than the rest of her family’s
income combined.
While she is mostly busy preparing university
applications, Akter also spends time going door-to-door at the expansive camp,
documenting accounts of people who fled Myanmar last year.
She hopes to eventually publish her research when she is
in college, where she plans to study human rights.
“Why do people have to lead their lives in such a
situation?” she said. “One day maybe I’ll be able to raise up my voice about
human rights for the Rohingya.”
Also watch here: Story of Rahima https://www.facebook.com/mirsdq/videos/238389726854865/