Transcript: Episode #299: Once Upon A Time
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Greg Constantine 0:06
Everybody takes a different kind of approach, you know. And for me, I can only speak for myself, and that is that I like to just completely and totally immerse myself into a story, follow it for a really, really long time, and then just see what happens. And that's exactly what I've done for my whole entire career. And the Rohingya is, is one of those stories to where, you know, I feel like I have a greater understanding of the complexities of when these big, huge bursts take place, because I've just followed the story in between those troughs, you know. And I hope that the work that I have produced people can look back on it and say, Okay, now I have a better understanding as to why this happened, or what were some of the contributing factors to why 2012 happened or 2017 happened, and this particular photographer's work has made some kind of small contribution and helping to kind of unpack that and make it a little bit more understandable, but they were excluded from mainstream society. The Rohingya was a bit different in that sense, because here you had a huge community of people that were not only stateless inside of Rakhine State, but also you had 10s of 1000s at that point and period of time, of people who were Rohingya, who were stateless and who had been thrust across an international border and were also refugees at the same time, you know, almost every single box was ticked off with the Rohingya community, displacement, disempowerment, marginalization, the denial of rights, you know, The lack of denial of education, the you know, denial of the rejection of identity, you know, all of those things were all packaged together with the Rohingya community.
Host 1:56
The situation currently taking place in Myanmar is abominable. There's no safety anywhere, and the world has all but turned its back on an entire people trying to claim their freedom and insist upon their human rights in the face of blatant evil and inhumanity, international media seems to have moved on to the next story, scarcely reporting on this one anymore, even as the horror continues. We at inside Myanmar podcast, find this intolerable, and we stand behind the Burmese people in their courageous effort to live in dignity. This platform is dedicated to making sure that we keep the conversation going while ensuring these voices continue to be heard. Today's guest is one of those voices, and I invite you To settle in and open Up to What follows you.
On this episode of insight Myanmar podcast, we welcome Greg. Constantine, Greg, thanks for stopping by and taking the time to chat with us.
Greg Constantine 3:55
Yeah, thanks a lot for having me. I appreciate it.
Host 3:57
So the bulk of this interview, we're going to get into the project you've been doing of documenting Rohingya history and the website associated with that, which is really fascinating. But I think before we get to that piece, I think to better understand what you were doing and why you were doing it. It's your own journey of how you got interested in this part of the world and these people, which led to really the importance of this interactive, robust, dynamic website that you've built. So if you could flesh out your background that brought you to Burma and to the plight of the Rohingya people, and what led you to this great thing that you've created?
Greg Constantine 4:37
Yeah, I think you know, my kind of history with the Rohingya stories would have started back in 2006 so I spent I I'm photographer, I work on these really kind of long term immersive projects. And I spent 11 years working on a project that was called nowhere people. And that project basically documented. The lives of, I guess you could say stateless communities all around the world. And it originally was going to be, was intended to just be a couple photo essays on stateless communities here in Asia, Southeast Asia and and clearly, I think anybody who does any kind of work on global statelessness in the world would be pretty much negligent if they didn't include the Rohingya community. So I started that work. Think I would have been my first trip to southern Bangladesh in early 2006 and with no expectation of what would happen. And it just, I think I was just so it was a story back in 2006 that really nobody was paying any kind of attention to. I mean, you know, even though the Rohingya had been thrust into international news several decades at a time, in 2006 it really was kind of like an abandoned story, I think, for most people, but because I was coming to it through the lens of statelessness and this arbitrary, arbitrary denial of citizenship. It was very new for me, so I was in Bangladesh, and was just completely shocked with what I kind of saw in the stories that I heard, and was just kind of even more amazed that there was just no media coverage on that story whatsoever. So it didn't take very long for me to realize how complex the story was. And I just kept going back. I think I made probably 12 trips to southern Bangladesh before 2012 and with every single trip, it was just kind of peeling away a new layer to that story. So one trip would be all about, you know, there was a point in time where a lot of people, a lot of young people, were coming out of rock kind state, because they were being they were facing so many problems and getting permission to get married. And so one whole entire trip just focused on dealing with the stories of documenting, the stories of young couples that basically had been forced to leave home because their families had been extorted more money than they could give out anymore, or that they're, you know, they had been harassed so much by NASA at that time, and they really had no choice but to come to Bangladesh. So it was those kind of stories. And then all of a sudden, you know, the boat traffics started to happen, and that thrust the Rohingya into the news and, you know, it's just one of those stories to where the Rohingya come in and out of the news cycle, then consistently. And I was always interested in really focusing my attention on those moments where the Rohingya were not in the news cycle. So going to Bangladesh was just all those times just made sense. And at the same time, you know, North rock, kind states completely closed off, and there was really nothing happening in situ at the time, you know, in 2000 this would have been 2006 to 2012 and all my attention was in Bangladesh. You know, the story just became more multi layered in terms of how I was documenting it, but the root part of all that, the commonality between all the reporting that I done was always about the atrocities being committed against the community. What was the aftermath of the persecution that the community was being faced with, year in and year out, and year in and year out. You know, 2012 kind of came around, or when the euphoria over the democratic reforms started to take place, that's when the first book, or when the book of my work was published. And that was very intentional. I mean, it was, I knew that my work wasn't over with, but it was almost as if, like something needs to be out there to almost add a counterbalance to all this euphoria taking place. And so the book was published, and then everything happened in 2012 where I could get access, as a photographer to the surrounding areas outside of sitway and do more reporting on what had happened during that violence then. So I probably made five trips to to rock kind state, from 2012 until 2016 just constantly again, peeling away another label layer. You know, working on stories about the aftermath of the denial of medical care, or the lack of freedom of movement, or all those things that ended up happening as an extension of that violence, but in the placement of all these terrible internment camps. I mean, really, you know, I mean, they're not internally displaced camps. They're, they're internment camps. And that whole kind of apartheid, like existence that you'd heard about was really very, very it took on a physical transformation in 2012 I found so it was working on all that. And. And I got blacklisted and couldn't go back. But the timing of when that happened was right before 2017 and as we all know, I mean, you had 2016 happen, then you had 2007 17 happen at a whole bigger level than anything and and I was back in Bangladesh, so my kind of, my commitment to the Rohingya story. It's been ongoing now for almost 18 years, and it's just developed and evolved in a lot of different kind of, in a little kind of, a lot of different kind of ways. I mean, 2017 for me was, was of it was, I mean, I hesitate to say this, but it wasn't a breaking news story for me, because I had 12 years of or 11 years of constant work on the story, so I knew the back story. And when 2017 happened, I think I came into that whole experience with a little bit of a different eye, and also very different kind of motivation, than just documenting the atrocities and and I think the work ended up reflecting that. I mean, yeah, I photographed the situation for people coming across, but I made probably four more trips after 2017 to almost, like, take a very forensic kind of approach towards things. And that's kind of led to, you know, to kind of where I am right now.
Host 11:21
So right? So when you first got involved in understanding what the Rohingya crisis was and reporting on it, you referenced how at that time you were documenting displaced peoples around the world. And so what I'm curious about is, in what ways you were seeing the Rohingya situation as something that was consistent with the tragedies and traumas that displaced people everywhere have, and in what ways was it an outlier? And I prefaced that question by saying that I imagine there were some pretty profound ways it was an outlier, because this is the second part of the question. In what ways of all the different stories that you were following at that time for that initial focus, what was it about the Rohingya that had you kept coming back again and again to further understand it, when there was this whole history and experience of displacement around the world at that time in general.
Greg Constantine 12:07
Yeah, well, I mean, I'll, I'll kind of almost refine what you've just asked, and that is that that project nowhere people, it wasn't on displaced people. It was all on ethnic communities where the state had weaponized citizenship and it arbitrarily deprived them of that fundamental right. And what does that look like? I mean, what does it look like this very kind of obscure concept of citizenship and all the package of rights and everything that goes along with it, what does that look like when it's removed from not only you as an individual and a family, but as an entire community? So that's what that project worked on. And the reality of is is most of the communities, for that knower people, project that I documented, were communities that had never left their home country. They had never crossed a border. Generation after generation of people from their families had always had been born in a particular place, had lived in there, but they were excluded from mainstream society. The Rohingya was a bit different in that sense, because here you had a huge community of people that were not only stateless inside of Rakhine State, but also you had 10s of 1000s at that point in period of time of people who were Rohingya, who were stateless and who had been thrust across an international border and were also refugees at the same time, you know. But I think that the reason why I kept going back to that story is because if I thought about almost like all the different characteristics that make up this theme of statelessness, let's just say, I don't think that there was any other community that had been so incredibly paralyzed by all of the those different characteristics than the Rohingya community perfect storm. Exactly, you know, like that whole structural element of violence, almost every single box was ticked off with the Rohingya community, displacement, disempowerment, marginalization, the denial of rights, you know, the lack of denial of education, the you know, denial of the rejection of identity, you know, all of those things were all packaged together with the Rohingya community, and that was unlike any other community that I had photographed at that particular time, or that Would that I would photograph, because I went to 18 different countries for that project, and every single community was a bit different, but the Rohingya was the one that really for that project, nor people served as the centerpiece. As this is about as bad as it can probably get when you're dealing with the issue of statelessness. And also, you know, I guess each each community for that particular project had it comes into it my involvement, or my introduction, and each one of those communities came into a whole different package of historical contexts, which each one of them, the Rohingya, was, you know, very unique in that sense, the historical side of things. I. So I think that's the reason why I just was committed to the story for I have been for so long, but at that period of time, definitely because, honestly, I think it was one of those things where I was just nobody was really spending a lot of time on it.
Host 15:11
You know, you talk about it, checking a lot of boxes, and that's what drove you to want to understand more about the nature and context and have questions answered. But what about it? Gripped your feeling, gripped your emotion, gripped who you were as a person to want to outside of the boxes being checked that made you want to be involved as passionately and consistently as you would end up being.
Greg Constantine 15:31
I think there were a couple different factors. I think one was, you know, Rohingya are really poetic in the way that they describe things, right? And you can hear and listen to someone talk about, you know, I guess you could say this deep exclusion, this deep rejection of a place that you in yourself feel like you belong to in your family and history and everything. But there was something about the way that Rohingya articulated, that sense of having been excluded from this place that they have called home for however long anybody wants to argue, you know, I mean, and I think that was, that was something that was just really different, you know, and you heard that from both men and women, and I'm not just saying that the poetic side of them was a reason. It was just that there was something that I think came across in the way that they articulated their situation and all the different complexities of it all that I just wanted to continue to keep interrogating, you know, both visually and interview wise and investigatively and everything. And I think that's one of the reasons why I just kept going back over and over and over again.
Host 16:59
You also mentioned how you reference how there was there are these flare ups with the Rohingya where they gained the world's attention for a period of time, but you emphasize how your presence was there, not just during those flare ups, but during the time that no one was paying attention when it it might seem to outside observers, like not much was happening, but You found a lot was happening there that then would explain, go on to explain what happened when those situations came up. And this is a common theme that I've talked about with several guests, not interestingly, not so much about the Rohingya, more about the anti military underground democracy movement that we've seen for all these years, particularly with like Eliot Prasse Freeman and Delphine Trank talked with them in quite some detail about this, because their work is focused on that, and just referenced how when people try to understand Myanmar, it's 88 2007, 2021, maybe some years in the transition period, certainly 2017 but it kind of presupposes this sense that nothing is happening. Is very boring. There's nothing to report. Even sometimes even the past guest I've spoke to, they said that fellow academics, diplomats, reporters, whoever was would introduce them by saying, yeah, there's nothing really going on here. And then, and so then there becomes this sense that when 2007 happens, or whatever it is, then suddenly it's like, oh, this came from nowhere. Like, wow, look at and then it goes back into nowhere and that that's really a kind of Western or outside, really active ignorance and disinterest in trying to understand what's happening beyond the headlines and events that are grabbing us that actually explain those headlines and events in much better terms than just, oh, something, something happened out of nowhere. Isn't this interesting? And so it's interesting to take that understanding of of this kind of underground democracy movement in the years when the big headlines aren't happening, and look at it that same kind of view with the Rohingya that there's, there years that everyone will point to when it was international news and every international organization and newspaper and government and everything else, but then that is precluding the and ignoring, really, the underlying reality that's happening in between those moment those big moments, and That's also leading to those big moments to happen. So what, as someone who has has this has been on your radar far before it was an international news story, and long after people lost interest or their attention span was limited and went somewhere else. What's your feeling on the on uncovering a conflict and a people consistently, whatever's making the headlines, and then seeing when suddenly it does make the headlines, how the international community is understanding it or misunderstanding it's kind of the relation between those two different moments in time.
Greg Constantine 19:54
Yeah, you know, I think that Well, when you when you talk about. A story like the Rohingya. The fact is, is that, like, it's, it's always a good thing that the story is in the news cycle. I mean, you know, really and, but just like you've said, I mean, there are things that happen in those silent moments that are actually setting the stage for some of these things to take place, and I think that it's really important for there to be some kind of record that shows that these are not spontaneous events, that one thing has led to the next has led to the next, has led to the next, and then this happens. And it's that process. And I feel like, you know, let's put it this way. As journalists, everybody takes a different kind of approach, you know, and for me, I can only speak for myself, and that is that I like to just completely and totally immerse myself into a story, follow it for a really, really long time, and then just see what happens. And that's exactly what I've done for my whole entire career. And the Rohingya is, is one of those stories to where, you know, I feel like I have a greater understanding of the complexities of when these big, huge bursts take place, because I've just followed the story in between those troughs, you know, and I hope that the work that I have produced, people can look back on it and say, Okay, now I have a better understanding as to why this happened, or what were some of the the contributing factors to why 2012 happened, or 2017 happened. And this particular photographer's work has made some kind of small contribution and helping to kind of unpack that and make it a little bit more understandable. You know? Yeah, I mean, that's, that's kind of, I can only speak for myself when it comes to why I've done it the way that I have all these years.
Host 21:55
What would be an example of a moment where the work that you were doing when it wasn't so much in the headlines gave you an understanding to better understand something that happened when it did come into headlines.
Greg Constantine 22:08
Yeah, when a perfect example would be in the years leading up to the first boat movements taking place, you know, I'd go to Bangladesh from 2006 until 2009 and during every single one of those trips, you could just feel it getting worse and worse, that the desperation that Rohingya were feeling in those camps was just elevating every single year, that the The the reasons behind why Rohingya were trickling out of NRS at that time into Bangladesh. It they were pretty complex reasons. You know, forced labor was a huge deal. They were building the border wall between the forced labor Rohingya were being forced to do that. You know, denial of marriage, lack freedom of movement. I mean, all those things are things that are completely intangible when it comes to the news cycle, but in the practical day to day lives of people, when you are pressurized that bad, it then triggers something to happen. And when the camps started to get really, really intense leading up to you could feel that moment. And then all of a sudden you start to see boat movements, and again it, you know, it's kind of put into the news cycle. And for good reason, I think that gave me a better understanding as to why these hundreds upon, if not 1000s of people were taking this very, very dangerous journey from inside of Burma and from Bangladesh to Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. It just, it just made more sense having come through it and again, like, you know, I, I just hope that the the work at that particular period of time would give people a little bit more of a frame of reference as to what was happening and why these people were getting on those boats. So that'd be an example that give you.
Host 24:01
Another thing is when you first became involved in wanting to understand this story and report on this people. You reference coming back on many repeated trips to try to uncover more go to more places, talk to more people. I assume that that was predicated off of a kind of mystery, of a host of unanswered questions that you were really seeking to try to understand what's going on here. So what were some of those questions that were really driving you at the heart of that search?
Greg Constantine 24:32
Yeah, I mean, I completely agree with you. I mean, I think that there came a point in time to where, when I first started working on the Rohingya, it was very much kind of like reporting driven, but then that changed, or I don't want to say changed, because it's always been reporting driven, but it just evolved into curiosities and having to feel like there was more that I wanted to know about. And, you know. I going back to denial of marriage. Let's just say, I mean, it's just, it's a concept that most people just can't even fathom imagine. You know that you would end up leaving your family behind in very, very tense circumstances because you're denied this, this fundamental kind of like rite of passage for most people in the world, or whatever you want to define it, but you know all the package of complications that came along with that, from the extortion to the potential jail time from family members, from, I mean, all those things, and then finally to where a family gets to a point that says the two of you, you young couple, if you want to have a normal life, it's not going to be here. You're going to have to leave and you're going to have to go across the border. You have to leave your homeland. I mean, those are kind of questions that you know. On one trip, I just remember hearing that couple people saying, yeah, there's a lot of people coming over because of this, and I didn't have enough time on that particular trip, but on the following trip that was the focus of the whole entire most of that, most of that, that trip, and it gave me a better understanding of, you know, the it's funny, because even though the Rohingya story, in so many ways, has been and this ties into which I'm sure we'll get into a little bit later, But it the Rohingya story is so much defined on physical violence, you know, yet at the same time, it's those invisible forms of violence that don't fit into what most people would consider to be a violent act are actually the things that have, in a lot of Ways, done a considerable more damage to the Rohingya community, short term and long term wise. And I think those, those in that invisible form of violence, is something that for those early years of working on that story, those were the things that were pushing people out, you know, making people leave. And those are also topics that, you know? I mean, you're not going to find in the traditional media. I mean, nobody's going to be really spending any time on that. But for this particular community, was very, very significant, and I wanted to explore that.
Host 27:12
So in addition to exploring the Rohingya community, their lack of rights, their the temperature boiling up on each visit, as you describe, did you also were you also able to explore the other side of it, the aggressor that was putting them in the situation, and try to understand who they were, how they felt, what they were doing, what was pushing this, this putting these people in these increasingly deplorable situations.
Greg Constantine 27:42
Yeah, you know, I would, I would say that I from 2006 until 2012 all of my attention was on the the the aftermath of the reception of that violence against the Rohingya community. I was never exposed to the other side, the the perpetrator, I guess you can say, but 2012 happened, and I made four or five trips to situ, a and that was a big focus. You know? I mean, because I was in a place where, to an extent you could see and feel that, you know, the the beginnings of of that hatred, racism, exclusion, you know, violence. I mean, you could feel that, and that was, I think, a vitally important part of for me, the trajectory of the work that I've done on the Rohingya, not just visually, but also like to have more greater understanding. I mean, I just remember being in situa and talking with people from the Rakhine Buddhist community at that time. And you know, I'm not there, I'm not making any generalizations, but the people that I was talking to at that point in time, they were, you know, very directional in terms of how they felt about the Rohingya community. And I think one of the things for me was hearing that coming from people is something I needed to almost hear to help better understand the previous six years of work that I had done, you know, and even though that was coming specifically out of, let's just say that surrounding areas of sitway, which is far away from North rock kind state, but it didn't take long to kind of have a little bit more of a better understanding of just how much bigger this was and what was the kind of demographics of a larger community that was driving some of these things that. That time. I mean, I remember in 2014 there, I'd found out that there was going to be a big, huge mass anti, un anti Rohingya protest taking place in situa. And I was able to, I managed to be able to get on a flight and get to situate just in time for that. And I remember there were several 1000 people in the demonstrating on that day. And, you know, I think you'd be naive to think that some of those weren't orchestrated in terms of who was brought in intentionally and everything. But there was a very authentic feeling behind that demonstration on that day, and particularly some of the the leaders who were speaking at that time, at that at that demonstration, and it was really, I think, the first time where I could feel that antagonism towards this community in some pretty radical kind of ways, and that helped inform me in terms of how I continued with the work, and a much bigger, holistic kind of understanding of what was happening at that particular time.
Host 31:10
I'm also asking because, and I don't know if this is outside of your purview, but I've heard a couple different varying explanations on the side of the military why they were going to these lengths. And these aren't mutually exclusive. There could be some intersection with them. One being just a pure hatred, racial contempt, racism, genocidal racism. To to to simply want to punish a people based on their background, just pure and simple definition of of ethnic cleansing and racism in general. The other being that, well, the military need an enemy. They always need an enemy, and their what they did to the Rohingya was really just a more violent and brutal and condensed version of what they've been doing to everyone, including their own people, as we're seeing now. And they're don't really even began to understand who this military is. They're crazy, they're they're uneducated, they're these insane bullies that just do things for that are cruel for the sake of cruelty. And so this, this behavior that was exhibited towards the Rohingya. As bad as it is, it's really just a a more condensed form of their evil brutality, as we see throughout history and today of the rest of the country. And so I wonder if, in your study, in your reading, research, conversations, etc, if you gleaned any sense from the military, if they were motivated by a particular unique contempt for this group of people, above and beyond all else, and even at odds with their own to their own benefit, it was kind of they had such a fury with it. Or if this was just kind of a symptom of of a really evil and corrupt military that is just doing this all the time to everyone in all directions, yeah.
Greg Constantine 32:56
I don't. I don't really. I don't feel like I prescribe to the belief of just generally evil, you know? I mean, I really do feel that this, the the situation with the Rohingya is, is there is a unique characteristic to it. I think that, you know, I don't want to, I wouldn't want to almost like level this out by just defining this as being an evil, you know, regime. I mean, there's a lot of different actors, as we all know, who have all played their part in in what's happened in Rakhine State. And I don't think it'd be, I don't think it'd be very realistic to just reduce that down to the regime, yeah. And that's historical too. I mean, this is, this is just like the last 1520, years. I mean, all there's been a number of different actors over decades that have all kind of contributed to to everything in Rakhine State and with the Rohingya community. And I, you know, I also, at the same time, I don't, I don't think it's really even realistic to try to reduce down the driving factors between all of that, amongst all of that, into some something that's very neatly defined. I think that there's a lot of historical complexities behind it. I think there's a lot of contributing factors that have brought the situation to these key moments over the past few decades, and which has then led to where we are today. So I don't know if that answers your question. No, it definitely does. And I don't want to hide behind like, there it's, it's complex because it's really, it is complex. But there's, there's some things that are, you know, very easy to kind of see and understand that are very clear in terms of that, you know, I mean historically, I mean, and the the regime has always, like it has with everyone. It's played communities off of each other for its own. Purposes, and so those kind of hatreds, and the regime is not the only one that has done that as well.
Host 35:10
So yeah, so given that the, as you mentioned, the regime, current military and previous iterations are not, is not the only bad actor that has been the agent of Rohingya suffering. What do you think it is about this people, particularly, which has made them such a target of so many different actors from so many backgrounds to want to go out of their way to pick on and make their life miserable?
Greg Constantine 35:33
You know? I just, I'll tell you. I just, I don't think it can be answered in one answer. I really don't and I don't think it can be I don't think that you can say, oh, it's only just because it's a Muslim community in a Buddhist country. I don't think it could be reduced down to that. I don't think that you can say that this is a community where, you know, open borders during British colonial times resulted in migration. I don't think you can reduce it down to that, either. But I just think that there's certain particular narratives that have been exploited and manipulated and spun for various different reasons that has then created this situation, you know? So, yeah, I think it'd be doing the Rohingya community and what they've gone through all these years a very, very big disservice to reduce that down to one definable kind of answer.
Host 36:24
Yeah. How do they understand the and express to you and articulate the suffering they've been through? How do they make sense of it? How do they respond to it? What have you gleaned from those conversations?
Greg Constantine 36:36
You know, I think that Rohingya, who I've talked to, and I can only, I can only stress here that I'm just giving my own subjective opinion based on what Rohingya have shared with me. So no way am I speaking for the Rohingya community whatsoever. I never do that, but just based on what people have told me is that and shared with me is that, you know, there's, there's two primary dynamics that have always existed within Rakhine State. It's the relationship with the central government and the relationship between the Budd community and the Muslim community, you know. And at various points in time, those have clashed, in a way, and there's been moments where some of the the Rohingya would say that some of those, those those defining moments for them, have come from something that's been driven through policy, through the central government, but how it's then implemented on a local level by others is a whole different thing. You know? I mean, you can talk about like the 1982 citizenship law and and everything. But I think a lot of Rohingya suffering over all these decades has been something that has translated on how it's applied arbitrarily on a local on a local level. I mean, I think that, you know, I yeah, how would How would I describe how Rohingya have have almost tried to understand their the atrocities that have been perpetrated against them. The reality of has been going on for so many decades that each generation has almost like it's comes into it from a different perspective. You know, I mean, you have, you speak to 70 year olds, and they have a very different perspective as to why all this has happened. You talk to somebody who's in their 20s right now, and they're going to give you a little bit of a different answer, because they come into it from a different generation, a different perspective as well. And then you have people who you know their their lives seem to be have just been put completely on pause because of 2017 because of a lost husband or wife or children or something, and they'll give you a different answer in that sense. So I think, I think everybody has, I've been I've had the privilege of being able to spend so much time regarding you all over all these years that I kind of feel like I've have this I've been exposed to this wide spectrum of all these different things that reasons that when you that not one of them is the reason, but when you put all of them together collectively, it all makes a little bit more sense.
Host 39:24
So what would be some things that stand out from those conversations?
Greg Constantine 39:34
You know, like take, for example, you can talk with, I can talk with older Rohingya in their 70s now, and they will all, most of them will end up saying something to the degree of, there was a time, you know, I mean, like when I had friends who were from the Rakhine community, and we were going to university in Yangon, and we were, I. All these things, they have a frame of reference that I think is so critical right now, because they know what life was like before everything went bad. And those stories are pretty painful for them, because they've seen the trajectory, the downward trajectory of this community from what it did have at a particular period of time, you know. So their descriptions of that loss, that sense of loss and deprivation, I don't want to use the word suffering, but it's that sense of loss is really, really deep. You know, you talk with somebody who's in their 20s and 30s, and they've known nothing other than that, and a lot of their stories come from the depths and the degrees of what they've experienced that's all basically packaged and defined by some kind of form of violence, and almost to a degree to where it's just almost like this, this yearning for a normality that they know that they've never had in their life, and that they wish they could have, going to school, being able to travel, I mean, all those things. So that's that's a bit of a difference in terms of the story that you hear, that I hear when I compare different demographics within the Rohingya community, and not one is more painful than the other. I mean, really, when you think about it, they're all it's all collectively pieces together the the a community that's been that's gone through a lot over 6070, years, yeah, in varying degrees. And unfortunately, a lot of people in the world today, their starting point and frame of reference for the Rohingya community comes with 2017 you know, it doesn't. It doesn't. It's not informed by the decades that came before that.
Host 42:04
So yeah, after the 2021 military coup, there were some Burmese that were surprised to see that many Rohingya started to take photos of themselves with the three finger salute and show their solidarity with the Burmese activists and also express sympathy with the brutality that the military was treating them with, knowing having experienced this before, and I think there was surprise among many bamarre that was expressed because they had recognized they had been on the wrong side of history and not standing up for and defending Rohingya, and did not expect that kind of response. Expected something a bit more harsh, or just desserts or whatnot. So I wonder if you saw some of that interaction on lines that was taking place, and what your thoughts were as that was, I was I was manifesting.
Greg Constantine 42:54
I did see that, and my reaction was not in surprise for how the Rohingya were acting. You know, it was more just how ill informed people from other communities had were about the realities of who this community was. Is the history. I mean, it also just shows the depths behind how decades worth of manipulating narratives that have come from the regime over all of these years has really come to be the accepted belief from other communities about the Rohingya community, you know. And when I saw photographs of of young Rohingya, you know, expressing their solidarity with other communities. It didn't surprise me, because if you really look back historically, you know, the Rohingya community, going back even to the 40s, has always believed that they are a community from Burma of you know, I mean, really, that's what it is, and that's been one of the really interesting parts of the process of working on this new project, this recent project, is that I didn't, I didn't fully recognize that, you know, I mean, decade after decade after decade, you continually see this is a community that kept saying, we belong here. You know, we are not foreigners. Don't this tactic that you're taking to label us as somebody that doesn't belong here. We are resisting you labeling us as that because we believe we are people from Burma. You know, Arakan is always going to be home, but the fact is that we are always going to be people from Burma in that sense. And so it didn't in solidarity with other communities who were suffering the same as the Rohingya, maybe to different degrees. So in that sense, it didn't surprise me, but it was also kind of like unfortunate that it's taken 2021 to take place in the events after that, for a lot of communities to almost come to terms into. And I would say that that's probably. Very small percentage of people that reacted in that way, which is unfortunate, but it's unfortunate it took 2021 for that to open up the minds of some people. And you just hope that that would continue moving forward. You know, right?
Host 45:14
I know we're jumping around a lot, and all your research, it's fascinating stuff. I do want to get to the projects that you've actually been doing, so we can land some of this content and analysis into the work that you've actually published. So the first thing to reference, we actually referenced it before I was introduced to you through the interview with Andrea Gittleman at the US Holocaust Museum, and referencing a project that you did in relation to the museum and exhibition. So can you tell us about that one?
Greg Constantine 45:47
Well, you know, I was in 2000 I had had twice before the museum had run outdoor projections of my work on the Rohingya on the outside walls of the museum that would have been in 2013 and then 2018 so I already had a relationship with the museum, and they were, I already knew that they were very interested in the Rohingya story and everything. And then in 2019 they approached me about this idea that they had to do this major exhibition, and they were already familiar with my work. And so it was, I believe, that that particular period of time that you know this is almost like the the most amazing opportunity for me as a photographer who's followed this story for so many years, to be able to try to share that knowledge with other people, and work with a team of people at the at the at the museum to make that happen. And I was guest curator of that of that exhibition. And it was a, it was a, it was a pretty incredible experience of putting that exhibition together using all the different advice, the teams of advisors that we had trying to put together the the right narrative of of everything and the I think we're all very, very happy with how it landed. And to be honest with you, it's not really for me to be say that we're happy. It's that the reaction that Rohingya have given in terms of their feedback for that exhibition is the thing that almost is, is makes it makes sense. The exhibition kind of went up, and I had given everything to putting together that exhibition. And it was I went through several kind of months of almost very, very deep reflection after the exhibition had gone up about, you know, my role as a photographer, my role as a journalist, my relationship with the Rohingya story as A whole. And I think it just got to the point to where instincts and curiosity started to kick back in again. You know, I think that that exhibition is so vital for people's greater understanding about the Rohingya community, but not just about the Rohingya community, but it's about this protracted sense of the process that takes place with genocide. And this goes back to just allowing people to come to some recognition that this is something, that these acts are not something that just happened spontaneously, that there, that there's a oftentimes they're planned out. There's steps along the way that situations are are brought to the fore to where that makes communities more vulnerable. And you know, you mix in social media with all of this, the proliferation of communications and everything, and it just makes the situation right for what was going to happen in 2017 and I think that's one of the powerful parts of that exhibition, is that it does almost allow people to see that backstory behind it, but also at the same time it it shows the survival of a certain number of people from the Rohingya community, who I think are representative of the larger community from the village of Mong nu, and what they went through, it gave them a platform to have a voice. So I think that was really important. But after the exhibition went up, there was a I ended up just again thinking about myself, and it was almost as if, like that, visual identity of the Rohingya community today, in most people's eyes, is very much portrayed by violence, victimhood, statelessness, you know, refugee life, the excluded, the unwanted, the desperate. I mean, really, that's that in so many ways, is how the community is portrayed in the eyes. Identified to people. I know that there's a whole other side to that story, and in thinking specifically from a very personal side of myself, I believe that it was, has been crucial to be reporting on the atrocities that a state does on a particular community, like what's happened to the Rohingya. I will always believe that. But one of the unintended consequences of myself reporting all of these years on the persecution of that community and all of my peers reporting on the persecution of that community, is that it's almost as if, like the constellation of the images that we've created reporting on that have forged together in some kind of unintended way to then create the visual identity that most people in the world have of the community today. And this was a really important moment in that deep reflection for me to say I know that there's a whole different side of the story. How can I almost challenge myself as a photographer and what the work that I've done with very, very good intentions? What can I do to challenge my own work in that sense? And so there was, there's one section in that exhibition that was, I thought, was just crucial. And you know, that was informed by Rohingya, who we met with and talked with and everything. But there's a historical component of that exhibition that almost talks about a little bit of the backstory about who the community is. And I would say, probably about three years ago, on an instinct, I started approach a lot of older Rohingya that I knew in different countries around the world and asking them, I'm just curious, like, what kind of visual materials that you have that tells a very different story about the Rohingya that's about this time in the 40s, 50s, 60s and early 70s that you've never shown with anybody before. You know what's out there. And a few of the things that people started to share with me really were astonishing. And I kind of felt like, Okay, I'm onto something here. You know, let's just see where this can go. And in running in parallel with, with that of challenging my my own work as a photographer, was also this sense of like, it's almost, it's almost like challenging the way that people think and broaden the way that they think about genocide. I mean, it's very that is something that is very anchored in legal analysis and everything. But I've always kind of felt, and I know that there's a lot of other people that kind of do too, and that is that, you know, part of that process, the genocidal process, is the elimination of a community's identity, their heritage, who they are. That's been part of the process with the Rohingya community is this rejection, this exclusion of of who they are as a people and how long they've belonged to a place, and what they've contributed to the greater fabric of Burmese society over all these years. You know, it's been contested, it's been rejected and everything. And I feel that that labeling of the foreignness of the Rohingya community is something that's always been like an underpinning driver behind the acts of physical violence that then meet the definitions of genocide in people's in people's eyes. So for me, it was almost like, what can I do that will challenge myself as a photographer and the work that I've created, but also, at the same time, what can I do that will be visually to challenge that narrative that people have come to accept that has been one of these underpinning drivers of the violence. And so there was almost twofold. And after getting a few of these images back from some of these people in different places around the world, I kind of felt like I was on onto something, and that kind of launched what's happened over the past three years before we get into that.
Host 54:22
It's just making me think, as you're saying, and it's such a it seems like such a careful balancing act, because on one hand, you want to present the tragic reality of the extreme violence and brutality that they're being faced with in order that their their struggle and their pain is and their situation is known as widely to as many people as possible, so that this story is is not being ignored, and hopefully something can be done about it. But then the more you push that and that being pushed for these purposes of wanting attention shown on it, then you run the risk of turning them into a one. Intentional caricature, where they're only defined by violence. So it almost I wonder if you ever had a feeling of of in your work, of wanting to bring this out, that of wanting to to bring the reality of the harsh brutality they were living under for these purposes of that maybe something good will coming from this, and then all of a sudden, feeling that that, inadvertently, perhaps you were contributing to this caricature, which then you wanted to compensate with by bringing these other elements of humanity at play. So I imagine that that would that could be a difficult balance for to try to figure out, as an observer and a storyteller, how to bring out these different parts, and not just for the purpose of the story, but also for the engagement that you're hoping to engender as well.
Greg Constantine 55:49
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, you know, as a photojournalist, you are there to report on what's happening in as many different I feel in from as many different angles as you possibly can, and this is has been a regime that has, over successive regimes, has caused a lot of damage to this particular community, and states need to be hold to account for that. I really do believe that. But I think, as a photographer that pretty much were has worked almost exclusively on stories about human rights abuse, the power of the state. Like I said, that's one of the unintended consequences of the work. I don't I again, I feel very strongly that I Don't devalue any of that work. So whatsoever, you know, and that's, I think this is one of the reasons why I'm doing that, why I'm working on this project right now is because I feel it's, again, it's reporting on a story related to this community that has not been reported on before. That's, you know, people can view this project as being a historical project, whatever. But it's, in essence, is it's a journalistic project that is trying to find information, report on information, and share it with people, analyze it in that process. And and I, honestly, I feel like it, maybe I would feel a bit differently if I had not had 18 years of working on this story with this one particular community, knowing all the different nuances and things. But I almost feel like this, this particular project brings my work with this community full circle, in that sense, you know, my involvement with the Rohingya story full circle. And actually, to be honest with you, know? I mean, like, over all those years of reporting on the atrocities taking place today, I hate to say it, but, like, did it really make any difference? I mean, these are the harsh realities that I think that sometimes we as journalists and everything that we have to come to terms with sometimes, you know? I mean, it's, it is important for the world to know about things always. But after you followed a story for so long, you know, how has it made a difference? And I think that my work on the rangia that it has contributed to things. But I honestly feel like this particular project right now is something that will have leave a lasting legacy and actually have more infinite value to people's better understanding of what's happened than any of my previous work.
Host 58:26
So tell us about that.
Greg Constantine 58:27
Yeah. I mean, the whole project at Calais just kind of came from curiosity and instinct and knowing that there was another side of the Rohingya story that people had never seen before. And I stress the word scene. Books have been written about Rohingya history, by Rohingya themselves, by scholars, etc, but as a person who works in the visual medium, I can't write about that. I have to show that kind of story. And so what ended up happening was I ended up kind of after that first initial exploration into the community, and feeling like I was on to something, I started to work with a team of Rohingya in the camps, and a couple Rohingya still in Rakhine State. And over a series of months, we collaborated, collaborated together, and went out into the communities to see what people actually had and what people did have, I think blew me away, and I think that even for ringing themselves, hearing them say, you know, I've heard about this, but I've never seen this. I just could never imagine that someone from my community would have held on to this particular land document from the late 1800s or X, Y and Z. And so it the project just kind of developed in that sense, and all the different materials that were being shared and contributed to the project. Object started to take on almost like a form and a shape from these isolated, singular pieces of documentary heritage that each in itself has its own kind of micro history, but when you put them together like a jigsaw puzzle, it starts to take on a form and a shape that creates almost another portrait of this community that nobody's ever seen before. And what's been really exciting for me about this project is that, you know, in essence, I'm not really the photographer, right? Yeah. I mean, these are materials that Rohingya are actively contributing themselves. This is who I am. This is who we are. It's not, you know, me portraying that. I'm just basically helping to make sense of all these materials and being informed by them as to the way to tell this kind of story. And that's been incredibly exciting. And at the same time of as we were working in these different areas. You know, I was in the UK on an academic fellowship for this project, and so I was spending months in doing deep research in in various archives. And again, you know, I mean, like, a lot of this material is not, I'm just, I don't feel like a lot of this material is, is not something I'm discovering. Past scholars have talked about it and written about it and and everything. Certain pieces I feel that that have been found through the past year are very unique. But I don't think people have seen these things before. You know, and when you start to show who this community was at a particular period of time. And I mean, that's the that's one of the amazing elements of an archive, is that you know what people might have done and said, 40, 5060, years ago. You can't transport yourself back there. But what you can do is you can take archives and transport that which was done or said then and place it into the present in a really interesting kind of way, to where you can activate the voice of somebody from the past into a present day conversation where actually what they're saying then has more value. Now true, you know, and that's what's been so exciting, that's been one of the many different elements of this project that's been so exciting, you know, is to be able to find old letters that were written by Rohingya in the 1940s and almost imagine their voice talking to people today, and I think that's providing a lot of context that people have been without for a long period of time, yet at the same Time, you know, I think that the project is it's allowing people to reimagine, in a sense, because it's visual, it's allowing for people, it's providing a platform for people to reimagine, you know, who this community was at a particular period of Time, prior to the visual representations that myself and past journalists have made in 1978 and 1991 and in 2015 and 12 and etc, you know? I mean, that's, I think one of the exciting parts of this whole project is that it's allowing for for a different visual representation to almost come into form and shape for people. I think one of the other exciting parts of all this in with the project at Calais, which echoes, is the Rohingya expression for once upon a time. And you know, we in the West, we, we associate once upon a time with fairies, fairy tales and fables and everything, but for the Rohingya, when they when you hear that, it's really much talking about a very concrete past that has some pain involved in it, and also some very fond memories. So when I would be in the camps last year, I went twice, and I would talk with an older Rohingya man in his late 60s, early 70s. And as a neutral outsider, it worked to the benefit of this project. Every community has their internal suspicions and everything, but as a neutral outsider, it's actually opened up doors for people to share materials with me that they wouldn't share with anybody else. Yeah, you know. And so after talking with a Rohingya man in his late 60s who was a bit skeptical of what we were trying to do, and then coming to the realization of why it's so important. And then him saying, Hold on for a second, and walking into the back of his hut, and then coming back out with a whole entire bag filled with documents that he's never shown to anybody. And seeing all these things has been pretty amazing. And then when he says, come back to my hut tomorrow morning at 10, and when we show up, when we return to his hut the next morning at 10, and there's a line of 10 other Rohingya men standing outside of his door with bags of materials that they had the presence of mind to grab when their homes were being burned in 2017 and carry with them from booth all the way over the mountains into Bangladesh. It's, it's, it's validating for them to know that somebody sees the value in these materials that they have known has such important value, not only to them as an individual in their family, but they're the last remaining shreds of their evidence of this belonging that they have claimed and professed for so many decades about belonging to Burma, you know. So when I see fires that sweep through the refugee camps every single year, or right now, the Instagram feeds are filled with the flooding happening in the camps because of the monsoon. Or when I read the reports of burning villages in buchadong, you know, over the past eight months, or whatever, I feel heartbroken, not just because of the loss of life, but also, at the same time, because of working on this project. I think of all those those materials that have such a huge value to the greater story of the reigning community that are now being lost as well, and that's what this project is hoping to do it's hoping to almost, you know, do all those things that I said the very beginning of the of the of the interview, but also at the same time it's, it's turned into, almost like a preservation project too, in that sense that the digital archive that has been created. Of some of the materials on this are, you know, it's, it's, it's, they're really important.
Host 1:07:01
So, yeah, so we definitely encourage listeners to check out this website, which will also be included in the show notes, because it's this is the the where your project is displayed in its full form, interactive and very well designed, and takes you through this journey. I believe it's nine chapters of information. So for those, and again, we encourage listeners to check that out, even stop at this moment and go and take a look. But for those that maybe are driving or cooking don't have a hand free and will do so later, can you as best to your ability, lay out what these nine chapters are, and then some way to impart just the esthetics, the interactive feel of it, the kind of collage, archival scrapbook, almost feel of how everything comes together, because it's not a traditional website in the way that this is a storytelling mission, and the website is put together as a means, not just in terms of content, but also in terms of the experience of interacting With this website, that the medium itself is a storyteller, along with the content actually being told.
Greg Constantine 1:08:04
I appreciate you saying all that. I mean, it's, it means a lot to hear that you've that's what you've taken away from it, because that's how it was intended. Yeah. I mean, the website is structured into nine chapters, and throughout the whole entire throughout all of those chapters are active Rohingya voice either from the present day or from the past, that the structure of the website almost takes people with the first few chapters, using materials that are very much driven by archival work, establishing the presence of a Muslim community in Arakan centuries ago, but not claiming that this is a community called the Rohingya, you know, but also, at the same time, being able to at least present things in a way that allow people to make those, those natural connections historically that you would make Over centuries of time and the development of communities and how they come about, because all communities are like that. You know, I mean, and especially in Burma, that there's been that the creation of who communities are today is not something that happened at a specific particular year, it's something that developed over centuries in that sense. And so that's what the beginning chapters of this project are trying to do, is show that through the reporting of people who traveled through Archon at a particular period of time, through early British colonial time as well, that this was a community that was intact in Arakan historically, and also at the same time using, I think one of the things that comes about in those first chapters is it's really trying to show that the Rohingya community, members of the Rohingya community. Were active participants at key moments in Burma's history, pre independence, post independence, and not passive bystanders or passive victims, you know. And it's, it's using the stories of certain individuals that are representative of a community, I think. And so those first chapters are really, they're, I would say they're a bit dense in terms of historical materials, but it had to be that way. And the website is designed in a way to where it's, you know, it's not asking people to spend several hours on it all at one time, because we know that that's just an impossibility these days with how people are distracted and tension spans. But it's, it's designed in a way to where it allows people, it's a digital book. It allows people to put a bookmarker and come back to it and then pick up where they might have left off, or jump to another particular section. I mean, that's the technique that's been taken in terms of how it's all designed. But also at the same time, you know, it's like, how do you take because you're relying on flat, two dimensional documents that can be to anybody's eye, pretty dry. How can you make them almost come to like and speak in a really exciting kind of way? And that's the design technique that's been kind of took months of fine tuning and exploring and everything about pulling sentences out. And, you know, just those, those, those most important parts that you feel like people need to be walking away from and highlighting. How do you go about doing that in an esthetic kind of sense online? And I feel like that's been accomplished with the design of it all. So you see that the website then almost takes a historical approach, but then at the same time, there's a fulcrum and a pivot point to where the website then turns away from those archival materials really into those materials that are self contributed by Rohingya themselves, you know, actively using these materials as a Pair or as a sentence within a larger visual paragraph that's being presented that tells the larger story. And that's really how it, how it how it is. And it kind of, you know, come, kind of compartmentalizes things in terms of what those visual materials are from a whole entire collection of national registration cards to a whole entire collection of collage work of different families, materials that not just tell the story of one document, but to allow a portfolio of documents to almost have a conversation amongst themselves that tells the whole entire story of a family or the whole entire History of one man's professional life as a government servant, which you know, to work for the government, you had to be a citizen. So it's all these kind of things that the website is trying to kind of convey to people. But I also think that it's, you know, perfect example of showing and not telling would be Rohingya have always said that they have that they've had people from their community elected as members of parliament. Well, you can't really tell that. You have to show that. So it was my task to go through all the different newspapers from the 1950s and 60s and find the reelection results where it actually has sultanamed or Abdul Ghaffar or Abdul bashur listed on the front page of a newspaper and showing that to people. And there's so many different exciting examples of how that's of those discoveries. And then I think the the final chapter of the whole thing, not to release a spoiler, but really, I mean, it's the final chapter of the whole entire project is just this massive collection of family photographs that are universal in their sense. You know, when you look at some of these photographs, and I've shared them with people who are from different countries, all around the region, all around the world, you know, and it doesn't take very long to see a picture of a Rohingya man in the early 1960s where you say, I mean, I've got a picture like that of my dad and in Canada or in the UK, or a photograph of all of my grandparents sitting together that looks identical to that. I mean, it universalizes things and and I think in that sense, it's the strength of this, the collection of materials, that really tell that kind of story. So, yeah, it's been, it's been an amazing project to work on, and some of there's been some epic journeys just in getting some of these materials as well, the stories about how some of these materials have been found, or found, or, I'm not going to say, as interesting as the larger but boy, they're pretty epic kind of discoveries along the way.
Host 1:14:47
Tell us one of those.
Greg Constantine 1:14:51
I think probably one of the biggest ones has been, I mean, it has been written. And Rohingya talk about this, and others have talked about the Rohingya involvement in World War Two in Arakan. And just like the Karen, the Kachin, the chin, I mean, communities in Burma sided with the Allied Forces instead of the Japanese. And however, anyone wants to spin that historically, is up to them. But the fact is, is that in in Arakan, you know, the the British set up a force called V force. And V force was an intelligence force where they used indigenous communities behind Japanese enemy lines to provide the eyes and ears of Japanese movements, of what was taking place. And in North Arakan, one of the communities, the primary community was, was members of the Muslim community of North Arakan, the Rohingya community. And this would have been back, I can't remember what, exactly what month, but it would have been in 2022 I think it was one of the team members who was working there came across a portfolio of documents of one man, and one of those documents was two of those documents was an old, original passport. His name was Abdul Salam, issued to him in 1949 and one of the other documents was a war service certificate issued to him on june 14, 1945 by the British government, acknowledging his services towards the war efforts. It's a document that I think a lot of people have never, ever seen before, and that kind of sent me on a bit of a goose chase, where I started reading books about V force and everything. And there was one particular there was a British soldier. His name was Anthony Irwin, and he wrote a book called Burmese outpost, and in three chapters. And in one of those chapters, the first chapter, all he does is write about the Muslim community of Arakan, the Rohingya community, and their services towards the British and V force. And in that book, he mentions His names of several men, and one of the men that he mentions is Abdul Salam. And I was thinking, I mean, this can't be, but it is. We cross referenced the man that he talks about. Abdul Islam is the man that we found the documents for several months, even before I read this book. And then that sent me in this other rabbit hole. I wonder if I can find the family of Anthony or when here in the UK, and see what materials, if they have any that dream situation of, could you find a British soldier that fart fought in North Arakan with the Rohingya, and somehow carried a camera with him and took pictures, you know? And one thing led to the to the to the next, and I was able to find the living relatives of Anthony Irwin and his son, who's in his early 80s, and his daughter, who's in early in her 70s. And when I told them about this project and what we had found, and there were certain patches passages within his book that were quite profound about the british's responsibility towards ethnic communities, which they obviously did not live up to. And he was very vocal about that, which I found to be very inspirational. But when I told his daughter about this project, she said, I think you need to come to my house. And so my partner and I, she was visiting me at the time, we went out to this tiny little hamlet in the middle of Oxfordshire, and walked into her house, and on the floor were these 219 40 style suitcases that were opened up filled with papers and diaries. And she said, I have, I have two materials there that I think would be of interest to you. And one was a photo album, and on the spine was labeled Arakan 1943 and when I opened up the photo album, the one of the first pictures was an eight by six black and white print of her father standing with a whole entire group of young Rohingya operatives for V force at guerrilla headquarters in Tong Bazaar, dated 1943 I mean, it's a visual that just anchors so many different things, you know, and that I, I'm convinced, has never seen the light of day since 1944 so cool. You know, that's amazing. And it just, again, it's just, it's a visual validation, it's a visual representation. It's something that supports a story that has been rejected and contested and even put into myth, in a sense, you know. But at the same time here, we here, this project has been able to find this material. In the back of Anthony Irwin's book are two letters that he exchanged with a young Rohingya man named wajidula, and those letters were exchanged in 1944 or 1945 and those two letters that are published in the back of that book are not of any kind of. Significant historical significance, but it shows the connection the active voice of someone from the Rohingya community with this British soldier at that time, the rapport that the two of them had, this friendly camaraderie and this respect that each one of them have for each other, and that respect it doesn't, was not just just didn't appear out of nowhere. It was something that was earned from both of them on both sides. But one of the other materials that was shown to me in this family was a third unpublished letter from that was sent by wajidula to her father. And it's this third letter that is really profound. It was dated, I believe, in March of 1946, so this is, you know, fresh off of the the war ending, Burma was in turmoil all over all over the country. Constituent Assembly had not even, you know, gotten to that particular point. Burma, clearly was not an independent country. But in this letter, this man wrote about how communities all over the country were protesting and demonstrating for freedom, and I'm paraphrasing, but he said, to a degree, I don't agree with the protesters and demonstrators. I believe in the power of the Constitution. I believe that the constitution will be the honest master. If freedom is going to come, it will come constitutionally. So here you have a Rohingya man in 1946 placing so much faith in the rule of law and constitution over man in making these decisions about equality and rights, I again it, it shows the active voice of someone from this community in a way that I don't think anybody has ever imagined was possible. And the belief in this new country, you know, and that's so completely counter to what the narrative that has been created about the Rohingya community over all these decades. This is a community that, you know, I don't need to say it really. I'm just reinforcing it if I talk about it. But here you have a man in 1946 talking about this. It was just so profound, but yet, at the same time, we know that it would be the change of a law 40 years later that would end up, in many ways, betraying the Rohingya community with the 1982 citizenship law, and that was very much driven by man in that sense. So you know, these little pieces of history are not just pieces of history. They're activating Rohingya voice over a course of decades in a way that I think people have never experienced or heard before or been exposed to before, and I think that that's it's a really powerful thing to be, to have the privilege to be a part of that process.
Host 1:22:58
That's an incredible story, and it's a very imperfect example, but it I can't hear that and not think of the historical example of African Americans that were that also had their own divisions in World War Two. And there's many things about these examples that don't line up and in terms of the contrast, but there is something that rings true in some way of because there's something about putting on a uniform and sacrificing and fighting that brings about a legitimacy of some kind by definition. And so to reflect on these Rohingya and this one Rohingya man in particular, who was enlisted and through the camaraderie, obviously a good soldier and loyal for the cause that he was fighting and that and and that this is going above and beyond the mere fact of citizenship and legitimacy. This is, this is the ultimate sacrifice. And again, the examples aren't perfect by any means, because it's colonial Burma and, you know, on and on and on, but, but if you just kind of remove all of those historical oddities that that don't match up on either side, but you just look at what it means to put the legitimacy of putting on a uniform and risking the greatest thing you could risk, and then being denied your, your and having Your, your past history itself removed and legitimacy with that. Yeah, these things don't exactly line up. Absolutely.
Greg Constantine 1:24:24
I, you know, I think that what's been so fascinating for me is that, you know, in working on this, on this project, is that the product this project is not is, in no way, is claiming to be the authoritative history. I mean, it's not but at the same time, what it is doing is that it is showing these key moments along a historical timeline where members from this community were actively participating. And when you. Start, if you isolate each one of those by themselves there, it's pretty extraordinary. But when you sew all of those points of history together again, it kind of you end up seeing a community that has very, very deep sense of belonging. In the face of so much antagonism against them, decade after decade after decade, saying we belong here we are from here, and doing whatever they particularly can, just like every other community throughout the country, of trying to do what needed to be done to stake their claim in that society too, through self preservation, through politically, through arms. Well, you know I mean and, and that's when you look back at history, you end up realizing that the Rohingya community was, in a way, as as much as they've been positioned as being the other, they're really, they're they're very similar, in that sense, towards their actions of what other communities were going through over those decades too. You know, politically participating, politically demanding their rights, demanding their their stake of clear in terms of their recognition of their identity, participating economically, I mean, all of those things. So, yeah, it's, it's been an amazing project to work on
Host 1:26:40
and again, looking after the 2021 coup, we referenced the three fingers. And the meaning that that had another important moment was in just the weeks after the coup, maybe even the first week. I don't remember the exact date. As you had all of these different groups out protesting. You had the memes and humor and music and all this other you had a Rohingya group that was marching in lockstep with many of the others after the coup, with posters and signs saying, we are Rohingya. And that was also considered by many to be something of a watershed moment, that they were self identifying, that they seemed to be welcomed with the others that were walking. It was some comment that this was probably the military's absolute greatest fear. They had taken an action that, within days, had seemingly reversed all of this hatred and racism they tried to sell, at least in some superficial form. But what were your thoughts on seeing that the symbolism, the meaning and the potential importance of those moments?
Greg Constantine 1:27:39
Well, I mean, I think the symbolism, the importance, just goes back to kind of what we said at the very beginning of the of the of our talk. I mean, I think it was incredibly inspiring to see that happen and take place. I think that again, it was another show of solidarity with other communities across the country who, in a lot of ways, have, have not accepted this community, you know, and at the same time, I think that it, it, it's an it's one, one more gesture of how much this community believes that they are part and parcel of the country. So for me, I was very inspired to see pictures like that coming out right after, immediately after everything took place. Yeah.
Host 1:28:26
So I want to close in asking some questions about Rohingya culture. And the reason for this is that so much of your project and your concern has been in wanting to flesh out this full humanity and not, not, not to find them in this one dimensional kind of way of violence. And so you reference the background they have in poetry. This was something the literary style and poetic influence was something that really impressed you about Rohingya people. I don't know if you want to go in that direction. More, also just curiosity about food or language or music or whatever else, of the sides of culture and humanity you want to bring out so we can have this more picture of this people.
Greg Constantine 1:29:15
You know, I think let's what I meant when I was talking about that it was that it wasn't so much about literally poetry, it was just that what captured me so much was just the way that Rohingya were able to articulate how they felt After having experienced so much trauma and pain, you know? I mean, I've come to know the community and all of those qualities that make them, in my eyes, a really unique community. Community that has so much to and has contributed so much, you know, I don't think, I don't think I'm the I would think I would much rather hear a Rohingya talk about their culture and all those characteristics than for me to be the one talking about it. You know, that's personally, because I think that they can help add more color about those unique characteristics than probably I could. No, I mean, I really appreciate the opportunity to sit and talk with you and share the story of the project and my background with the story, you know, the over the next month, the last three chapters are going to be released, and then after that, there's going to be, you know, really, hopefully, a series of exhibitions and a book that will end up coming out over the next year or two. I'm really hopeful of that, but I think that there's some I'm happy to be here in in Chiang Mai, because I think that, you know, we're can convening where a lot of young, mostly a lot of young scholars from Burma, are going to be converging on Chiang Mai University, and they have a lot of different perspectives on things. And I think that I'm excited to see how this project can be inserted into those kind of conversations that are happening here, and also, at the same time, how the project can then find its way into discussions and debate happening internationally, not just from Westerners, but primarily within the Rohingya community themselves, and how they're utilizing these materials that they've contributed to show People and speak for themselves too. So, yeah, great.
Host 1:32:02
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