Arakan News Agency
The plight of displaced communities in Myanmar’s western Arakan State and the impact of the displacement on children has led to calls, in a new film, to boost education as a vital step to end divisions between Buddhist and Muslim communities.
The documentary film, “Sittwe,” was released this month in Thailand after being banned by Myanmar censors at its original debut at a human rights film festival in Yangon.
Directed by American filmmaker Jeanne Hallacy, the film focuses on challenges faced by two 16-year-old teenagers — a Buddhist boy and a Muslim girl — who live in internally displaced camps in Arakan state. Both their homes were torched during inter-communal violence in 2012.
That violence led to over 100,000 people forced into camps, where many, especially from the Muslim community, remain today. Muslims are prevented from returning to their former homes in Sittwe.
Hallacy says the film hopes to end tensions that remain between the Buddhist and Muslim communities.
“The film was intended to try to create a small window of discourse among youth who are living in this conflict area,” Hallacy told VOA.
“We went out of our way to make sure that we were also including Buddhist youth in it, that it wasn’t just Rohingya Muslims, because Buddhist kids have also been affected,” she said. The goal, she says is to “try and create this dialogue through the film.”
The violence of 2012 devastated local communities, leading 140,000 to flee their homes into displacement camps. Others fled by boat to other parts of South East Asia seeking refuge.
Muslim youth confined to camps
The Muslim Rohingya people remain in government-controlled camps. They are not permitted to leave, even for education, and rely on informal schools within the camps.
In 2016 further bloodshed erupted after nine police officers were killed in Arakan State by a group of Rohingya militants.
In response the Myanmar army carried out a massive crackdown, with dozens of Muslim Rohingya killed and injured, with security forces accused of human rights abuses. Thousands of Rohingya fled to neighboring Bangladesh.
