Myat:  Part 1. November 24, 2024. I receive a message in my university email. It says, Are you Burmese? I'm surprised because it is my first time being asked something like this. I search the name on Google and find out he is from a Rohingya refugee camp. The Rohingya are a minority Muslim group living in Myanmar and they fled the country in 2017 because the Myanmar military launched a general strike.
News 1: The Rohingya are a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority who mostly live in Rakhine State in majority Buddhist Myanmar. The UN says their persecution in 2017 was a textbook example of ethnic cleansing, and the UNHCR says that the Myanmar government has been killing them for fear of 
Myat: persecution. Myanmar is a Buddhist majority country.
They face a lot of discrimination. They don't have citizenship. They are barred from education. I was a journalist back in [00:01:00] 2017 when the Rohingya people were fleeing from Myanmar. At that time, I was reporting on two writer journalists who were detained for investigating on how Rohingya people were being killed in the western part of the country.
I didn't have a chance to go to where they lived because of the security rigs. I knew about them and felt some kind of the connection to their stories. But, why is he sending the message? I want to know more. So, we add each other on WhatsApp.
After we chat for a few minutes, he invites me to the place where he lives. Hi. How are you doing? I accept his invitation because I don't have any Burmese friends at NYU. And, I also really want to know more. Why is he at NYU? What did he see? [00:02:00] And what exactly happened back in 2017. I want to know why he reached out to me.
He is cooking when I get to his home.
So I asked him why he sent me the message. And he tells me he was searching for one of the professor's name in the school email system. And he saw a lot of similar names pop up. And that gave him to the idea to check if there might be other Burmese students at NYU. 
Sa-ai: So I sent a message to all, yeah, everyone I see with Burmese name.
Myat: Here's Ai Euler. He arrived in New York at the same time as me in August.
Like I said, I know what happened to the Rohingya people from the news, but I didn't have a chance to talk to one of them. I always wanted [00:03:00] to know more why they decided to flee to Bangladesh and what they experienced. Now, I have a chance to talk to one of those stateless people in New York. What did he say?
Why did he flee from Myanmar?
The crisis began on August 25, 2017, after the Rohingya ASA militant launched a deadly attack over 30 police posts in Myanmar. So the government declared ASA as a terrorist organization. After that, Myanmar military launched a brutal campaign that destroyed hundreds of Rohingya villages. And it forced them to leave Myanmar.
News - 2: Bodies strewn at the mouth of the Naf river. The border between Myanmar and Bangladesh. Ethnic Rohingya, men, women, and children. Hundreds killed. 
Myat: Sai is 17 at that time. He lives in a small Rohingya village called Ngai An [00:04:00] Chau. The village is quite peaceful. And he has friends, most of them are from the military families.
But he says, 
Sa-ai: I'm in around 2017, August. I am someone who see more than everyone in my village because my home is very near to the police stations. Around 11. There were lots of military, they were coming to the villages and they were carrying, it's a dead body, I can see it from afar from my home, the balcony of my home.
So, uh, I mean, that person was carrying, um, like using like a blanket. Um, and they put that person into a blanket, I can see the leg. They have like arrested lots of people with them. So they have, uh, many other instruments with them, like big bags with them, like there's something they are carrying, and those people are tied with the, uh, with the ropes.
Myat: He sees everything from his house because it was quite close to the police station. The villagers are also frightened.[00:05:00] 
Sa-ai: All are closed, everything, like, there, like there is even no, no animals. The 
Myat: military starts arresting everyone they see on the road. So Sai's family and all the villagers hide in the village. 
Sa-ai: That is when we left from our homes and we stayed into a forest next to our village. 
Myat: They are hiding in the forest, surviving on the dry food they carried, and taking the supplies from other houses that were abandoned.
While they hide in the forest, people from the nearby villages pass by on their way to Bangladesh. 
Sa-ai: Like they're full of roots, people are walking.
Myat: He thinks the military will leave so that they can return home. But he realized they can't go back because [00:06:00] the military has taken over the village. So they decide to head to the border like the other workers. The whole family set off early in the morning. 
Sa-ai: Uh, we must really join these people. Otherwise, like, if we missed, uh, the, the group of people, then we will become very alone, and we will be in more danger and more risk.
We must better, um, like, save ourselves. Okay, so, uh, like, uh, every morning we wake up very, uh, early. Uh, That day, if we are not moving to Bangladesh, I would definitely go to my home again, but I never got a chance to go there. We, we didn't work on, on existing route. People make jungle the route for them.
Myat: Nearly thousands of people are walking. They don't have the leaders. They don't have maps. They are following each other. 
Sa-ai: So in, in some paddy [00:07:00] fields, I saw lots of dead bodies. Like it was smelling very bad. 
Myat: He is taking all the videos with his mobile during their journey. Women, children, carrying the bottles, cooking pots.
It looks like they are taking a break. 
Sa-ai: See, all the people just taking, they are just resting like this. See, see, yeah, so we crossed all this mountain.
Myat: After walking through the forests and making their way, they finally reach the Bangladesh border. He is so far safe now from the brutal killings. 
Sa-ai: For example, I am no more in danger. Still even I do not know where I have a right and where I am going. I no longer need to worry, uh, for my life. No, something like this.
So people were just like taking their places to sleep. That night, like in the border side, people were like staying there. My family, um, [00:08:00] just like came into a villages, into a village. We came into a villages and we stayed like in the homes of a local community there in Bangladesh. Bangladesh. So, um, we stayed there and my father went with other peoples to see what other people are doing.
And, like, after one or two days, he took us to, to, to Camp 15, that we say it now, Camp 15. And there we built, like, a bamboo shelter and that, that is how it, it just.
Myat: Today, Khaos Bazar is home to over a million Rohingya refugees, including Tsai and his family. He lived there for over six years. Their houses were burned, but Sai has the footages of their homes.[00:09:00] 
Sa-ai: And I, the most, the main thing that I missed is my motorcycle. This one is mine. So, I really missed my motorbike. This one. 
Myat: He wants to go to the school because the Myanmar government didn't allow them to continue to the university education. 
Sa-ai: To go to local school in Bangladesh, so it's also restricted there.
So in Myanmar it was also restricted. Rohingya student cannot study like after class 10. We cannot continue their studies anymore. In Bangladesh, it is more, uh, I mean, better than that. Even we cannot study like even the class 10, something like that. 
Myat: He started online school from the camp.
Sa-ai: So in the camp, internet connection is like not available in every places. Sometimes like I go to the market to get access to Wi Fi and sometimes like, uh, if the assignment deadline is very near, sometimes I go to the mountains [00:10:00] because like we get access to internet on the top of the mountains, something like that.
So I just like, um, take the instruction of the assignment and do it in my home. I wanted to study in a physical, uh, class in a traditional university. So I was just like, keep applying in many, as many different universities as possible. I have applied, I think more than 150 universities. 
Myat: And he finally got an admission to 
Sa-ai: NYU.
I chose NYU, um, given the rank and like everything. And also one good thing that I, uh, that happened to me was like, NYU is a, a partner university of the university of the people. So that was a good thing for me to be considered here at NYU. 
Myat: Now he's free from the cage. New York is the place to education hub in the world.
What will he do? He said it's the beginning of the end. 
Sa-ai: The beginning of the end is something like I can say I [00:11:00] came here. I came here and there are lots of people and there are lots of mechanisms that helped me to make this happen to me. And I must take it in a very serious way and I must take the full advantage of these opportunities.
I can say U. S. is the hearts of politics, world politics, I can say. U. S. is the hearts of world politics. And like now people, of course, There are activists, there are politicians, there are agents of change, I'm a change agent. I'm also myself a human rights activist, so mostly what we do is, uh, we ask the decision maker to act and to, to do things the way, like, it's good for every people.
But why not I, myself, become, like, uh, into the process of decision making instead of, [00:12:00] like, just asking other people. This, do this, do this, this is the good thing for everyone. But if I can go to that place to make this happen, then it's more good for me. And I feel like it's kind of like, I just, I'm just going one step further than that.
So, because I'm not the only person, there are thousands of people. Back in the country who are suffering the same. So I really need to bring changes for them as well. And as, as the very fastest step, what I'm trying to do is like to bring more and more student to create more and more, uh, educational opportunities for the student in, in the refugee camp in Bangladesh and also in Myanmar.
Myat: I'm on the way to my home now, even though I didn't have a chance to eat dinner together at the time. I told him I'll definitely come and have dinner together one day.