‘The land where we lived has gone' – the life story of a Rohingya refugee

“A tyrant leant over my cradle and traced a destiny for me that will be hard to avoid: I will either be a fugitive or I won’t exist at all.” – From First, They Erased Our Name: A Rohingya Speaks, by Habiburahman.

There has been much written about the Rohingya people of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. The Muslim ethnic group has been persecuted for generations, most recently from 2017, when 800,000 picked up whatever they could carry to flee to Bangladesh. But little has been written from the point of view of a Rohingya growing up in Myanmar – the daily humiliations, the struggle for survival, the fear, the stories whispered through generations to ensure they are not lost. Habiburahman, known as Habib, was born in a village in the west of the country around 1979 – he is not quite sure of the year. He has written his life story, and through that, the story of his people.

We meet in his publishers’ bland office in Melbourne, Australia. He is dressed in a neat blue shirt and dark trousers, and his black hair is slicked back.