First, They Erased Our Name: a Rohingya speaks

by Habiburahman, Sophie Ansel, Andrea Reece (Translator)

Overview

For the first time, a Rohingya speaks up to expose the persecution facing his people

“I am three years old and will have to grow up with the hostility of others. I am already an outlaw in my own country, an outlaw in the world. I am three years old, and don’t yet know that I am stateless.”

Habiburahman was born in 1979 and raised in a small village in western Burma. When he was three years old, the country’s military leader declared that his people, the Rohingya, were not one of the 135 recognized ethnic groups that formed the eight “national races”. He was left stateless in his own country.

Since 1982, millions of Rohingya have had to flee their homes as a result of extreme prejudice and persecution. In 2016 and 2017, the government intensified the process of ethnic cleansing, and over 700,000 Rohingya people were forced to cross the border into Bangladesh.

Here, for the first time, a Rohingya speaks up to expose the truth behind this global humanitarian crisis. Through the eyes of a child, we learn about the historic persecution of the Rohingya people and witness the violence Habiburahman endured throughout his life until he escaped the country in 2000.

First, They Erased Our Name is an urgent, moving memoir about what it feels like to be repressed in one’s own country and a refugee in others. It gives voice to the voiceless.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781947534858
Publisher:	Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Publication date:	11/05/2019
Edition description:	US edition
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	416,398
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Habiburahman, known as Habib, is a Rohingya. Born in 1979 in Burma (now Myanmar), he escaped torture, persecution, and detention in his country, fleeing first to neighbouring countries in Southeast Asia, where he faced further discrimination and violence, and then, in December 2009, to Australia, by boat. Habib spent 32 months in detention centres before being released. He now lives in Melbourne. Today, he remains stateless, unable to benefit from his full human rights. Habib founded the Australian Burmese Rohingya Organization (ABRO) to advocate for his people back in Myanmar and for his community. He is also a translator and social worker, the casual support service co-ordinator at Refugees, Survivors and Ex-Detainees (RISE), and the secretary of the international Rohingya organisation Arakan Rohingya National Assembly (ARNA), based in the UK. In 2019, he was made a Refugee Ambassador in Australia. The hardship and the human rights violation Habib has faced have made him both a spokesperson for his people and a target for detractors of the Rohingya cause.

Sophie Ansel is a French journalist, author, and director, who lived in South Asia for several years. It was during a five-month stay in Burma that she first encountered the Rohingya people and heard of their plight. She returned to the country several times, and also visited the refugee communities in neighbouring countries like Thailand and Malaysia, where she met Habib in 2006. Habib helped Sophie to better understand the persecution faced by the Rohingya, and she has been advocating for their cause since 2011. When the Myanmar government accelerated the genocide of the Rohingya in June 2012, while Habib was detained in Australia, she helped him to write his story, and the story of his people.

Andrea Reece is a translator of novels, short stories, and works of non-fiction from French and Spanish.

Editorial Reviews

This is my chance to speak for my people, who continue to suffer, but who are voiceless.”
—The Guardian

“This is the gripping, chilling inside story of the incubation of a genocide. In a corner of Asia where hatred has raged for decades, Habib’s moving family history emerges as a powerful and, to my knowledge, unique historical document. His compelling storytelling relates how playground prejudice against the Muslim Rohingya of Arakan escalated into pogroms, terror, and apartheid. As he makes his arduous and dangerous escape, he writes “death is always snapping at our heels”. What an incredible story. There are many who, after the killing fields of Cambodia, Bosnia, or Rwanda have said “Never again”. It just did, in Burma, and here’s how.”
—Jonathan Miller, Foreign Affairs Correspondent, Channel 4 News

“The book is written in simple language and tells the story without embellishment. There is no need for flourishes; it is relentless.”
—Gay Alcorn, The Guardian

“Written in a simple style appropriate to the childhood it records, the memoir is a devastating testimony of persecution.”
—David McKechnie, The Irish Times

“Habiburahman is a vivid storyteller…It is a book that should be read the world over until the Rohingyas get justice…An essential read.”
—Liam Heylin, Irish Examiner

“Habiburahman was a boy when Myanmar outlawed his ethnic group, the Rohingya, stripping its members of citizenship and turning them into a stateless people. His book is a rare account of growing up during the subsequent catastrophe for the Rohingya … a useful addition to the literature of human rights abuses.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Here is the first account by a Rohingya of the decades-long oppression of his people, as well as a memoir of his own journey. Chilling and eye-opening.”
—i

“The greatest barriers to stories such as Habiburahman’s being heard, though. Are invalidation and indifference. Do not be indifferent to this urgent, humane book. Read it, share it, talk about what has been happening—and in so doing safeguard the humanity of Habiburahman, the Rohingya and all asylum seekers, as well as the imperilled humanity of this country.”
—Maria Takolander, The Saturday Paper

From the Publisher

This is my chance to speak for my people, who continue to suffer, but who are voiceless.”

The Guardian

2019-09-11
A survivor of an Asian military dictatorship recalls his brutal childhood and, later, human rights activism.

Habiburahman was a boy when Myanmar outlawed his ethnic group, the Rohingya, stripping its members of citizenship and turning them into a stateless people. His book is a rare account of growing up during the subsequent catastrophe for the Rohingya, more than 700,000 of whom have since fled across the border to Bangladesh. Writing in a spare and unrelenting present tense—as if to emphasize that the disaster is ongoing—the author describes how he and other Rohingya were reviled as "black infidels," sent into forced labor, and trapped in villages they couldn't leave without a permit. As a young adult, writes Habiburahman, he had to use fake identity papers to study at a technical institute, where he worked with pro-democracy companions until someone betrayed the group and he was arrested, tortured, and imprisoned. After a jailbreak, he fled to Thailand and Malaysia and then, via a smuggler's boat, to Australia, where he spent more than 30 months in detention. Eventually, he lost faith that the needed help for the Rohingya would come from Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's de facto head of state, and he became an activist. Written with French journalist Ansel, the book doesn't explain how Habiburahman reconstructed his memories of events that occurred when he couldn't have been taking notes; at times, the facts are open to question or appear to conflict with remarks he has made in interviews. Most notably, he writes in an afterword that he has cut ties to his mother, believing his family needed "to become self-sufficient," a statement that's hard to fathom after he's shown repeatedly how hard it is even for a young Rohingya man to achieve self-sufficiency. Despite such inconsistencies, accounts by journalists and other observers support the broad outlines and some particulars of the moral outrages he describes, so his story is a useful addition to the literature of human rights abuses.

A refugee courageously recalls his persecution in a book with some iffy details.

Kirkus Reviews