Bangladesh, Canada and the whole world - take 2!

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Last week Tun Nyo, Soo-Eun and I were flying. We’ve started calling ourselves ‘the three musketeers’, as we appear inseparable (I think its a kind of self-depracating plan to stop our colleagues taking the mick first). We’re the first people we cheerily greet in the morning, we share an office in a cutesy hut, we sit together in the jeep, work in the same room at the camps, return in the jeep and then are always the last ones working late into the hot nights. We're also the most avant-garde of departments in the office - floating new ideas about social development (putting people's wellbeing/happiness at the heart of all projects), gender mainstreaming (making sure both sexes are equally provided for/promoted in all projects) and participatory practices (ensuring the refugees are consulted at every step of a project's progress). We’re striving against all the odds (and restrictions) to help foster a sense of community and to organize projects whereby refugees help develop their own society. Community Services 'R' us. Oh yes.

We had two projects running this last week; Canada Resettlement and World Refugee Day. For the first, we needed to call the drop-in-the-ocean 80 refugees who have been preliminary
selected for resettlement to Canada and tell them that they need to be present in the camp for all of next week. If they’re not there, they’re not going to Canada. The apparent simplicity of it is stressing me out already. I’m still not convinced everyone will be there. There’s always some spanner in the works, as I've learnt. But they're refugees, I hear you cry, why wouldn't they be in the camp? Well, despite the fact that it is technically illegal for the refugees to exit or indeed work 'outside', both of these do happen. The camp is entirely porous. No guards man its borders, and outwith the camp boundaries the Rohingyas do well at blending into Bangladeshi society. Unfortunately the flux is 2-way. Whilst some refugees leave, some local villagers enter and mingle, most often with ill-intent. But that is a whole other story. Another tangle in this complicated, hazardous web.
But even if they work, why wouldn't they be in the camp on the right day (man, you guys are so rational!)? Well, enterprising local Bangladeshi's can trap refugees if they are caught collecting firewood, and under a ridiculous law dating back to the British period (oh yes, we're to blame!) they can be handed over to the Forestry Dept. Now, I know the men in green who busy themselves on empty forestry tracks don’t usually strike fear in the hearts of UK citizens, but in Bangladesh those who work in the forest wield more power than the police! From that same British-imposed law (which was to protect timber for British use and to discourage people from living and moving freely within forest areas - part of the divide and rule policy) the forestry workers are vested with powers to arrest and detain anyone caught collecting wood. In the refugees’ case, these are usually children - children who are beaten, then detained, then beaten some more, locked within a tiny cell, fined more taka than their family’s accumulated possessions are worth, oh, and then beaten again. And even if the forestry deptartment don’t get them, they could as easily be at sea fishing, pulling a rickshaw in Cox's Bazar or even implicated in a crime in which they had no dealings. sigh. The relative safety of Canada is so far away in terms of culture, nautical miles, forestry workers, flying crows and piles and piles of paperwork. the interview. Only one person refused to leave the camp and, medical checks depending, they will all be Canada-bound this year. Pheew!).


On a brighter note, June 20th is …drum roll please…..World Refugee Day! It’s a golden opportunity for ‘us’ (how quickly we become a part of something - I’ve been institutionalised in the nicest of ways) and the refugees to raise awareness of the protracted Rohingya refugee situation far beyond the borders of the camps, which sometimes seem like the whole world. It’s a chance to go beyond the petty squabbles, the all-consuming food rations/lack of food, the internal festering power structures, the destructive familial violence, the leaking roofs - a chance, for one day at least, to be a recognized part of the international community. By some luck, and some immense goodwill from 3 famous musical people I shall soon unveil, World Refugee Day 2007 in Cox’s Bazar is going to like no other before. For one, it won’t be in the town itself at all, but in the camps. The guest list has also improved. There will be ambassadors from many influential countries, country heads of most UN agencies, high up representatives from the Government of Bangladesh (the pleasantly acronymed ‘GOB’) - all important influential people who will come to the squalor and listen. For the first time in 15 years, the refugees are going to be centre-stage instead of bit-players in a drama of dignitaries.

I’ve begun to think that South Asian countries have a predilection for prolonged introductions where names are reeled off through squeaking PA systems and acronyms battle for supremacy in speeches people have long stopped listening to. With any luck there’s a man with an uneven moustache or a few kids playing with a dog to keep you remotely amused. Without them, Lord help you. Well, we don’t need dogs or kids or unbalanced facial hair to steal the show this year, because it’s a different show altogether. With refugees as speakers, telling raw honest stories, the limelight will be solely theirs. To have a fair representation of the refugee community, the following people will speak; a female teacher, a male teacher, an imam, an older man, an older woman and some children. All very simple, seemingly. But whittling down 12,000 people to 7 is no easy task, I assure you. Throw in cultural and religious objections and it almost feels like learning Rohingya in a week, donning a beard and cap, and taking to the mike myself would be an easier way to pull the day off.

The main sources of contention were the refugee imams and the female teachers. The imams immediately presented a united front against their involvement in the day, arriving en masse at our office, citing potential public immortality. As we spoke I began to suspect that they were desperately looking to us for a reason, however flimsy, for them to be able to justify their attendance on the day to the rest of the refugees. I had listened to Soo-Eun give a passionate speech earlier in the week with quotes like ‘You are imams. Yes. You are Muslims. Yes. But you are also Refugees! And, as community leaders, you have a responsibility to your community to help raise its profile in the eyes of the world and let others know about your suffering’, so I swallowed hard and followed suit.

It is simple really. The theory for World Refugee Day is that in bringing famous singers and influential people right to the refugees' half-broken doors, the media will follow and, in their wake, the eyes and ears of Bangladesh. For one day, through the power of television and print, the people of Bangladesh will walk the muddy paths, see the squat huts and the ragged children and know that down there at the tail end of their country some people are eking out a survival on their soil.

I must've said something right - or Tun Nyo must've subtley corrected my babble whilst translating - as there were be-capped nods all round - the dilemma of music out-balanced by the very real and pressing need to bring attention and change to the camps.

When I said the female teachers were a source of contention, I really mean their fathers are. In a community where the oppression of woman is tangible - and I say this having thought about it in terms of cultural relativism and decided that yes, it is oppression beyond any reasonable cultural factors - it is of no surprise that out of 40 camp teachers, only 4 are women. What is surprising, is that out of those 4 young women, 3 were incredibly eager to have the chance to stand up in front of their people and speak on World Refugee Day. This ain't Hollywood, by any stretch of the imagination, but I was still shocked later when we heard that their fathers were forbidding their involvement. In response to this, we social counsellors did what we do best - we brought those strict fathers along to our office for a wee chat. The outcome is that they're tentatively allowing their daughters to prepare speeches and may allow them to deliver them. Wow. For someone who has always stood up and spoken, sometimes too loudly admittedly - but proudly and hearfeltedly all the same - I realise just how lucky I have been to have always been supported and encouraged and to always have had people in the audience giving me an emotional, if not a physical, thumbs up.

One of the fathers main arguments really got to me. It went along the lines of:-

'I'm refusing in the best interests of my daughter because she will be too scared to do a speech, as she is just a girl'.

I hope upon hope that come June 20th his daughter will have the chance to feel that exact fear. To experience the adrenalin grip her as she looks out over the crowds. She'll spot some familiar faces, some smiles and waves, and then a strength will wash over her. Her voice will carry over them, over that sea of troubled people. It will rise upwards to the sky, filling that space and time completely - higher and higher, as loud as she likes.

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Photos

Tun Nyo and Soo-Eun
My co-workers extraordinaire!

Comments

[nima]

Good work..keep it up girl..
Hey, Wish i could be one of the musketeers(: Wish... Its great reading your experiences there..its refreshing and heartening... Do keep us updating about more such happenings...(don't forget to tell us about the Girls eventual fight against the destiny her father so manly bestowed upon her, tell her how was her speech..) Awaitng to hear more... Love Nima