First, They Erased Our Name: a Rohingya Speaks
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15
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Average rating5
For the first time, a Rohingya speaks up to expose the persecution facing his people.
‘I am three years old and will have to grow up with the hostility of others. I am already an outlaw in my own country, an outlaw in the world. I am three years old, and I don’t yet know that I am stateless.’
Habiburahman was born in 1979 and raised in a small village in western Burma. When he was three years old, the country’s military leader declared that his people, the Rohingya, were not one of the 135 recognised ethnic groups that formed the eight ‘national races’. He was left stateless in his own country.
Since 1982, millions of Rohingya have had to flee their homes as a result of extreme prejudice and persecution. In 2016 and 2017, the government intensified the process of ethnic cleansing, and over 600,000 Rohingya people were forced to cross the border into Bangladesh.
Here, for the first time, a Rohingya speaks up to expose the truth behind this global humanitarian crisis. Through the eyes of a child, we learn about the historic persecution of the Rohingya people and witness the violence Habiburahman endured throughout his life until he escaped the country in 2000.
First, They Erased Our Name is an urgent, moving memoir about what it feels like to be repressed in one’s own country and a refugee in others. It gives voice to the voiceless.
Reviews with the most likes.
I admit to knowing little and less about this region of the world and the problems the people of this region face. In reading this book, it really opened my eyes to the downright deplorable actions taken against Rohingya Muslims and the strangely blind eye the world has taken toward them. They’ve been stripped of nationality, of a home, of even the name of their people being spoken, subjected to imprisonment, torture, and death, and this was the first time I’d heard of it. What a world we live in.
The book follows Habiburahman, from his earliest memories growing up in the Rakhine province of Myanmar, to the caution and danger he faced as a child growing up Rohingya in a nation where to speak their name invited abuse, imprisonment, and worse. The boot at the back of the Rohingya’s neck presses ever harder throughout this book, until Habiburahman ends up fleeing first his home, then his region, and finally the country trying to find someplace where he wouldn’t eternally be on the run or enslaved by his own people.
This is a very sad story, told beautifully with the help of Sophie Ansel in the writing of it. That an entire culture of people can be effectively eliminated from a nation is a horrific thing to read about, but I’m very glad to have read it. Stories like this need to be read, heard, and spread.
