My Name is Muhammad Jubair – I Am Rohingya I was born a Rohingya, but the world calls me stateless. My people once lived peacefully in Arakan, a region now known as Rakhine State in Myanmar. For generations, we farmed the land, raised families, prayed in our mosques, and spoke our Rohingya language with pride. We were citizens — recognized and included after Myanmar gained independence from British rule in 1948. But the tides turned. Successive military regimes began to erase us. In 1982, Myanmar passed a law that excluded the Rohingya from citizenship, declaring us “foreigners” in the very land where our ancestors are buried. Our identity was stripped away. We were banned from schools, denied healthcare, restricted from travel, and forced to register under false ethnic names. Then came the violence. In 2012, deadly riots broke out. In 2016 and again in 2017, Myanmar’s military launched brutal crackdowns — what the UN called a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” Entire villages were burned. Men were killed. Women were raped. Children were thrown into fires. I survived. Many of my friends and relatives did not. I fled to Bangladesh, like nearly a million others. Today, I live as a refugee — in overcrowded camps where hope is scarce but resistance lives on. I am not just a victim. I am a voice. I am a witness. I am a Rohingya youth activist who believes that our story must be told — not just as a story of suffering, but of survival. We are not stateless by choice. We are stateless because our rights were stolen. But we still dream — of justice, of dignity, of going home with our heads held high. Thank you for allowing me to share this. May our voices echo far enough to shake the silence. — Muhammad Jubair A Rohingya refugee, youth activist, and survivor