Breaking Through Isolation to Support Equitable Information Access for Rohingyas

The United Nations Secretary-General General Antonio Guterres has described the Rohingya as “one of, if not the most discriminated people in the world.” As non-citizens, they lack basic freedoms in Myanmar including the freedom of movement, and are considered stateless. Before 2015, some 1 million to 1.3 million Rohingya lived in Myanmar. In 2017, a military crackdown on the Rohingya sent hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fleeing across the border into Bangladesh.

In January 2020, the UN’s top court ordered the Buddhist-majority country to take measures to protect members of its Rohingya community from genocide. But the army in Myanmar (formerly Burma) has said it was fighting Rohingya militants and denies targeting civilians. The country’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi, once a human rights icon, has repeatedly denied allegations of genocide.

The process of creating the broadcast is complicated by divisive politics. The stories the broadcasters relay are carefully selected from Burmese papers, and although some of the news might be sensitive to the Myanmar government, the team seeks to tread a very careful line.

Internews recruited and trained the team in December 2019, and they began broadcasting in late February. A number of those initially approached for the job turned it down due to security concerns. Aisha, like all the broadcasters, does not use her real name, and the broadcast is produced in a private and secret location.

Although she is aware of potential dangers of being identified as a Rohingya activist, Aisha had no hesitation about joining the team and says she is not afraid. “We are not doing anything wrong,” she notes.

Rohingya is largely an oral language without a standardized and universally recognized written script, and very few Rohingyas in Rakhine State understand or have access to Burmese-language news sources. The result is that many in the IDP camps have frustratingly little knowledge of what is happening in Myanmar, Asia or the world.

While working as a broadcaster, Aisha continues to study architecture, but actually wants to become a politician so she can work to more directly support her community. Or if not that, she says, she would like to go to Rakhine State and teach young Rohingya children how to use computers. She speaks often to her relatives in the IDP camps.

“My mom has seven siblings, so I have about 30 cousins,” Aisha says. “We talk about the problems they face and what we can do, but actually we can’t do much except to pray and to give a bit of money. But my relatives listen to my broadcast and they are proud. To know the news around them, they say—it helps.”

Her biggest dream, Aisha says, is that one day her relatives in Rakhine State “are able to study freely and move around freely as we do here.”