Rohingya cast out of fire, into the frying pan

Rohingya cast out of fire, into the frying pan

When Hussein cooks, the whole community rubs its stomach and rejoices. The Rohingya's kitchen repertoire of Burmese, Bangladeshi, Pakistani and northern Indian hybrids - it's hard to classify the origin of his menu of dry-fried ribs, complexly spiced curries, mutton biryani and other marvels - is a feast at Islamic functions and wedding ceremonies in a Bang Rak soi.

During Ramadan, Hussein, a chef at Haroon Mosque on Charoen Krung, rolls out masterpieces for a few hundred souls who gather each evening, while in other months his big iron pots (his WMD; Weapons of Mass Delicacy) are kept on fire by orders from locals.

Hussein, 50, is what we can call a luckier Rohingya. He has a Myanmar passport and a Thai residence visa, and although he emigrated to Bangkok over 10 years ago, he still goes back to visit his family in Yangon a couple of times a year.

"Rohingya in Yangon have no problems," he says in Thai. "There are many mosques in the city and my family still lives there. From here I send money back home sometimes.

"But in Rakhine it was very bad," he continues. "It has been bad for a long time since I was young. I lost eight family members in the violence there, including my father-in-law and sister-in-law. They were attacked and killed. Some of my cousins' houses were burnt down. I have two sisters in Rakhine too, but they have identity cards, so they're doing okay."

In Bangkok, Hussein lives in a house provided by the mosque. The misfortune of homelessness - statelessness - suffered by so many Rohingya may be mitigated in Hussein's case, but the news of about 850 Rohingya migrants who were rounded up in recent southern raids confirms the ongoing predicament of these unlucky people that seems to straddle so many dilemmas.

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said the migrants wouldn't be deported, at least not now, but she also mentioned something odd about how some of the Rohingya might join the southern insurgency; I really can't see the logic in that in the same way that I wouldn't see the logic if the Rohingya were suspected of joining the hardliners in Palestine (the next day, the defence minister said there were no links between the migrants and the separatists).

And while the government is seeking advice from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the navy said they would beef up operations in the Andaman to prevent the Rohingya from coming ashore on their boats.

For once we realise that these are people who'd never enjoy watching Life of Pi, because the tigers, their personal Bengal tigers, will never leave them alone no matter how many shorelines they've reached. At least let's hope the 2009 scandal, when the navy was said to tow raft-loads of Rohingya back to the middle of the ocean, won't be repeated.

Then there's the scourge of human trafficking, to which ID-less people drifting in a vacuum like the Rohingya often fall prey. That's another dilemma not only Thailand, but also Myanmar and the UN are treading upon in their difficult decision on what to do with - or where to send or keep or legalise - them.

I'm sure most of us have at some point eaten food prepared by a Rohingya. Many of those who've migrated to Thailand, legally or otherwise, often find work selling roti from pushcarts on the street. They are often assumed by us to be Indian, or they might tell you they're from Bangladesh. It's not that the Rohingya are particularly culinary - in fact, Hussein's mentor is a Thai-Muslim chef famed for his Indian-style biryani - but the food Hussein has cooked and I've enjoyed for years recently struck me as a fitting analogy: he sometimes cannot tell me if the dish he's made is Indian, Myanmar, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Arabic or Rohingya (he does fine tom kha gai too). "It's a mix I guess," he once said.

But it doesn't really matter how you label a food as long as it's finger-licking good. The Rohingya - who originally came from the Middle East or India or Bangladesh, depending on which theory you subscribe to - suffer a lack of a label, an official label, and that's a stigma worse than any unclassifiable curry.

"In Rakhine, there are more Rohingya who don't have identity cards than those who do," Hussein says. When the violence broke out last September, he shuddered in fear. "I don't know what I can do," he says. "We have many Rohingya in Bangkok, and while we're at least lucky to be here, we felt bad about what happened in Myanmar because there was no warning and no explanation of when and why it will happen again."


Kong Rithdee is Deputy Life Editor, Bangkok Post.

Kong Rithdee

Bangkok Post columnist

Kong Rithdee is a Bangkok Post columnist. He has written about films for 18 years with the Bangkok Post and other publications, and is one of the most prominent writers on cinema in the region.

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