Photographer Chris Beale documents the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya from Myanmar and their struggle to survive as refugees in Bangladesh and Thailand. The exhibit spans nine years, taking us from their confinement in internally displaced camps in Rakhine State through their forced exodus to Bangladesh, to selling roti in the old quarter of Khon Kaen, Thailand. The exhibition opens five months after Myanmar’s military regained power over the country in a coup d’etat.

 

About the Rohingya:

 

The Rohingya are an ethnic minority from Myanmar’s Rakhine state, which borders Bangladesh. Even though the Rohingya have lived in the region for centuries, the Myanmar government claims they are interlopers from Bangladesh who are attempting to establish an Islamic state in a Buddhist majority country. In 1982, the government officially revoked the Rohingya's citizenship, rendering more than a million people stateless. For decades, the Rohingya have been subjected to wide range of human rights violations, including forced labor, land confiscation, unlawful imprisonment, restrictions on marriage and childbirth, and lack of adequate healthcare and educational opportunities.

Beginning in 2012, the Buddhist Monk Wirathu and other anti-Muslim extremists have used Facebook to spread hate speech against the Rohingya. These postings prompted riots throughout Rakhine, which left hundreds of Rohingya dead and thousands of homes destroyed. Following the attacks, the Myanmar authorities forcibly confined some 140,000 Rohingyas in squalid internally displaced camps where they are still trapped today with almost no access to schools, hospitals, and employment.

In 2017, Myanmar’s military escalated their persecution of the Rohingya. In a scorched earth campaign of mass murder, rape, and the razing of villages, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya were driven across the border into neighboring Bangladesh. Today, more than a million Rohingya live in appalling conditions, quarantined to massive makeshift refugee camps, sleeping on the ground in huts under plastic tarp roofs, without access to employment or proper education. Some 400,000 Rohingyas remain in Rakhine State. A brave few have made it to countries like Malaysia and Thailand where they can work and live relatively safely under the radar.

 

About the photographer:

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Chris Beale is a San Francisco-based photographer whose work focuses on marginalized people and communities. His photographs have appeared in Roads & Kingdoms, 7X7, Juxtapoz and Hamburger Eyes and have been exhibited in San Francisco, Paris, Bangkok and Khon Kaen.