Jasmin at the crease for England, her family were
displaced from Myanmar to Bangladesh, before being resettled in the UK. Since
arriving, she has excelled at cricket, and captained her country in a recent
tournament.
By James Bulman
| 16 May 2019
Jasmin Akter, an 18-year-old Rohingya who arrived in the
UK as a refugee some years ago, loves a challenge.
Last week, Jasmin, who lives in Bradford, West Yorkshire,
captained the England team in the final of the Street Child World Cup, and took
the team within a few runs of winning.
Yet Jasmin has had to overcome personal, as well as
sporting, challenges. Her father died shortly before she was born; and she was
raised in a refugee camp in Bangladesh by a single mother. “As you can imagine
being a single parent, raising five children in a camp, it must have been
hard,” she said.
As members of Myanmar’s stateless Rohingya minority, her
family had faced mounting persecution in Myanmar. Going back decades, outbreaks
of violence and laws stripped the Rohingya of their rights and deprived them of
citizenship, forcing families like Jasmin’s to flee across the border with
Bangladesh. The most recent crisis, which saw more than 700,000 Rohingya escape
a crackdown in the months after August 2017, was just the latest and largest
movement of refugees out of the country.
Ten years ago, when Jasmin was 8, her family was
resettled to the UK under the Gateway Resettlement programme. Run by the Home
Office with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, the programme has resettled around
750 of the world’s most vulnerable refugees to the UK every year since its
inception in 2004.
Even after starting anew in England, the challenges
continued for Jasmin. When she was 13 her mother was seriously injured in a car
accident – leaving Jasmin as her primary carer.
It was during those difficult years that the foundations
for her love of cricket were laid: “I was in a deep depression after mum’s car
accident, I used to isolate myself and never really talk to anyone at school or
at home,” she told UNHCR. “One day a friend took me to an after school club,
where one of the coaches suggested I join the cricket team. Within just a few
months, I’d been made captain and was heading for trials for the Yorkshire
team.”
Young Rohingya refugees in the Kutupalong camp in
Bangladesh often use cricket to fight against boredom. Their loves of the game
is shared by their hosts.
And Jasmin said that cricket also offered her a release
when she was growing up in the UK; and she is talented with both bat and
ball. “When I first started playing at
school there was some prejudice and criticism about me playing cricket as a
girl,” she added. “But I’m very proud that the Rohingya community are
supporting me and encouraging me on.”
Jasmin was chosen as captain of the England team in the
Street Child World Cup through Centrepoint, an NGO working against youth
homelessness in the UK. Staff from the charity met Jasmin at a local community
centre in Bradford, where she was coaching young children, and asked her to
join the team.
“Sport is something that I feel I’m born to do. It’s something that I’m really confident in and shows who I am.”
Ten teams from across the world travelled to the UK to
take part in the World Cup, organised by Street Child United, with the finals
played at Lords, the home of cricket, in Central London. Taking place just
before the Cricket World Cup in England this summer, this was the first Cricket
World Cup competition organised for street-connected children.
Street Child United is a UK charity using the power of
sport, specifically international sports events, to change the negative
perceptions and treatment of street-connected children everywhere. Our global
HQ is in London.
As well as offering children a unique opportunity to
represent their countries, the competition also gave them a platform from which
to challenge the stigma and negative treatment they often face, and to make
their voices heard to policy makers back home.
England’s final against India South closed in dramatic
fashion. It was a 6 from India South in the final over that took India South to
48 for 1, beating England’s 43.
Back home, with the competition over, Jasmin is studying
business at Bradford College with the aim of a degree in accountancy at
university afterwards.
But it is sport that is the real passion in her life, and
where she sees her future. “Sport is something that I feel I’m born to do. It’s
something that I’m really confident in and shows who I am.”
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