RESTORING CULTURE TO COMBAT GENOCIDE: ROHINGYA STORIES OF HOPE
A CONVERSATION WITH YASMIN ULLAH AND MAX FRIEDER
The Rohingya of Burma have been called the most persecuted community on the globe. For decades, the Burmese military has sustained a genocidal campaign aimed at erasing the Rohingya through any means possible, including the stripping of rights - education, worship, livelihoods, citizenship and more. In the face of this relentless campaign, the Rohingya within Burma and throughout the world have persevered. This was a discussion with Rohingya activist Yasmin Ullah and Artolution executive director Max Frieder, and facilitated by Restless Being’s Rahima Begum, about the work that Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are doing to restore culture through creative projects and finding stories of hope despite the obstacles and struggles the community faces.
Yasmin Ullah is a Rohingya social justice activist born in the Northern Rakhine state of Myanmar. She fled to Thailand in 1995 along with her parents and remained a refugee in Thailand until 2011. She's currently serving as a board member of ALTSEAN, steering committee of the Bridges MM project which helps train, and connect young people across Myanmar. She has worked on various projects such as the Time to Act: Rohingya Voices exhibition with the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, the Genocide Learning Tool with the Montréal Holocaust Museum, and the Anthology: I Am A Rohingya where she published her poetry along with other Rohingya poets from around the world. In 2021, she was named on the FemiList100, the Gender Security Project list of 100 women from the Global South, working in foreign policy, peacebuilding, law, activism, and development.
LEARN MORE:
Read and order your copies of Rohingya Folktales; I Am a Rohingya: Poetry from the Camps and Beyond; and watch this website for the forthcoming children’s book by Yasmin.
Watch videos from the Rohingya Cultural Memory Centre, located in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh.
Learn more about the work of Artolution, strengthening Rohingya communities through the power of art.
Max Frieder is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of the international community-based public arts organization Artolution. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with honors and a degree in Painting and received his Education Masters (Ed.M) in “Community Arts” in Art and Art Education from the Teachers College, Columbia University. He is a trans-disciplinary artist, sculptor, puppeteer, teacher and facilitates collaborative mural programs that address critical local issues with children, youth and families. His projects have taken him from Syrian, South Sudanese, Palestinian, and Greek refugee camps to conflict zones, traumatized communities, and across borders to over 26 countries globally. He planted the seeds for the first ongoing public arts program for Rohingya artists in the largest refugee camp in the world, in Bangladesh on the border of Myanmar. He is a published author contributing to “Art Making with Refugees and Survivors: Transformative Responses to Trauma after Natural Disasters, War and Other Crises”,as well as publishing with Global Citizen. For his global work, he was awarded the International Crisis Award from World of Children and UNICEF in 2018. His ranging work focuses on cultivating ongoing programs by educating local artists globally on how to transform communities through public engagement, creative facilitation and inspired participation as the next phase in the history of the arts.
Rahima Begum is a London based artist, consultant and activist. She is the co-founder of international human rights organization and grassroots movement Restless Beings - dedicated to supporting the world's most marginalized communities since 2007. Restless Beings occupies the space between activism, academia and advocacy. Rahima is the driving force for numerous human rights projects ranging from her work with survivors of 'bride kidnapping' in Kyrgyzstan leading to national legislative changes, to championing the rights of the Rohingya community across South and South East Asia for over a decade. Her activism has always placed human dignity and agency right at the front and the centre. She is also the co-founder of root/25, London coffee house, arts and community space and micro bookshop - where everything you eat, drink and buy goes right back to charity.
This event is part of Rising Up for Human Dignity: Resisting Cultural Erasure, presented in partnership by:
