Edmund Yeo started writing the film Aqerat before the word "Rohingya" would make world news headlines -- entirely for a distressing reason. Now the Malaysian film, which had its premiere in the main competition of the 30th Tokyo International Film Festival this week, has proved prescient as over 500,000 of Myanmar's Rohingya minority have fled violence for Bangladesh in one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in years.
Aqerat -- an Arabic word of Koranic association meaning an afterlife -- tells the story of Malay-Chinese woman called Hui Ling (played by Malaysian actress Daphne Low) who works in a town near the Thai-Malay border and tries to save up money to move to Taiwan. When all her money is stolen, Hui agrees to be part of a human smuggling ring that trafficks Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar by sea, but the work plunges her into an emotional crisis that makes her reconsider her own path in life.
Yeo wrote the film in 2015 when over 200 dead Rohingya bodies were found in mass graves in northern Malaysia. The traffickers were Malaysian. (A similar tragedy happened in southern Thailand with mass graves of Rohingya victims being found in Songkhla and Pangnga in 2015, a horrific human trafficking ring allegedly involving high-ranking officers).
Here Yeo talked to us about the film Aqerat, which will soon open in Malaysia.
Aqerat means more or less Judgement Day in Islam. Why did you choose it as the title?
In preparing for the film, I reached out to the Rohingyan community and became friends with one of them in particular. It was in a conversation with him that he spoke to me about Aqerat which is the Rohingyan version of the word Akhirah [in Arabic]. He explained Aqerat as a place where Allah brings them to decide whether they go to hell or heaven. It is the afterlife. As more and more Rohingyans escape ethnic cleansing in what have been their homes for generations, Malaysia acts as both a place of haven and a place of anguish. It is as if they, as with any refugee, are escaping from one death to face another trial.
I'm interested in the trans-border setting of the film, which takes place near the Thai border. Can you talk more about that in terms of its importance to the story and the journey of the lead character?
As urbanisation increases, rural areas are left behind. The poor of rural Malaysia are not so different from the poor of rural Thailand, which is just across the border. Families have been intermarrying for generations and the line on the map does not reflect the geographies of livelihoods. An entirely different country with different possibilities is less than half-an-hour away, the characters in the film could have taken a bus to Thailand, to Singapore, but they remain instead in stasis. In juxtaposition to them are the Rohingyan refugees who are left with much, much less in their pockets, rendering their excuses for not leaving useless.
A scene from Aqerat.
What made you become interested in the Rohingya issue?
The Rohingyan issue is at the forefront of the news cycle, but the repercussions will scar generations of survivors, reshape communities and landscapes. It is also not the only case of ethnic cleansing, or genocide, or mass exodus, and unfortunately it will not be the last. I began to write it in 2015 when nearly 200 dead bodies buried in north Malaysia were found. The traffickers were Malaysians. The situation has been dire for a long time, but my approach is, in some ways, beyond the Rohingyan plight, but instead speaking to all refugees who fall under the power of traffickers.
How do the Malaysian people in general feel about the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar at the moment? In Thailand, for instance, a lot of people have sympathy for them but there are also many who feel the opposite.
It's hard to draw a blanket statement of how Malaysians feel about the Rohingya crisis. The simple fact is that many Malaysians feel safer to live perpetually in a bubble and choose not to know, which is understandable, because Malaysia has its own growing pains. As we continue to develop as a country, in our constant struggle to survive economically, perhaps we have already lost our own capacity for empathy, maybe compassion is too expensive. This sense of survivalist insulation is part of what I sought to explore in Aqerat.
What drives Hui Ling, the lead character? How do you see her at the beginning and at the end of the story?
Hui Ling is driven by the belief that the only way to live a better life is to leave the country. She embodies the beliefs that have driven generations of the Chinese diaspora: this idea that the foreign is better, that 'better life' is to be achieved no matter the consequences. This has been passed down from our parents and grandparents. As an ethnically Chinese Malaysian, Hui Ling is an outsider in her own country, forever seen as foreign, tolerated until she is a threat. These are the facts of race relations in my country. Thus she, in a way, is a refugee in her own country. Security is only found in material goods, cash, social status. These, she believes, can only be achieved by studying abroad. Her desires are mirrored by the brain drain happening in Malaysia. Those who can afford it are leaving Malaysia for other countries with their talents. The resulting exodus leaves behind the least well-off and it is those least well-off who find themselves quietly folding away their ethics for an extra dollar so that they, and their children, may someday have a better life.
