Obalenie pomnika dyktatora Envera Hodży w Tiranie, stolicy Albanii, przez Albańczyków 20 lutego 1991.
„This exhibition explores how the Rohingya slowly went from citizens to outsiders—and how the 2017 violence forms part of a larger, sustained campaign of genocide,” says the opening text of the exhibition.
For decades, the Burmese military has prsecuted its Rohingya population, a Muslim minority in the largely Buddhist country. The exhibition shows how the Rohingya went from being citizens at the country’s founding in 1948, to persecuted outcasts today as Burma evolved into an increasingly ethno-nationalistic state with citizenship based on religion and ethnicity. By August 2017, the Burmese military’s long history of violence against the Rohingya escalated into brutal mass killings, sexual violence, and displacement. The Museum has raised concerns about the risk of genocide facing the Rohingya since 2013 and determined in 2018 that there was compelling evidence that the Burmese military committed genocide against them.
The exhibition has been divided into give chapters:
I. Belonging
II. Targeted
III. Weakened
IV. Destroyed
V. Surviving.
During the violence in 2017, more than 700,000 Rohingya fled to neighboring Bangladesh. Many walked barefoot and bleeding from injuries they had no time to treat. They carried young children on their backs. They only had the possessions they managed to stuff quickly into plastic bags.
Struggling to adjust to the loss of their loved ones, Rohingya in refugee camps face a new normal. They can’t work and rely upon humanitarian assistance for basic needs like food and shelter. Children, mostly unable to attend school, try to recover from the trauma they witnessed. Some of the women struggle to recover from the trauma of surviving gang rape. Most long to return home.
“I want to tell the citizens of the world that I am also a human being, and Rohingyas are also human beings.
What they did with a pen actually murdered our lives! After attacking us with a pen and erasing our existence, then they physically attacked us .... The world didn’t see how they have systematically destroyed us. The world just saw their physical attacks on us. There has been no Justice for us .... What they have done to us is genocide.
— Mohammed, a Rohingya man”. These words end the online exhibition.
Fragment of the online exhibition