by Luthfunnahar Shancyi
Editor’s Note
This is the second installment of Rohingya Khobor’s monthly series based on field experiences from the Rohingya camps. The author is a humanitarian worker with a background in law who has been involved in the Rohingya response since 2017, particularly in gender-based violence work.
In this part, the author returns to her earliest field experiences during the 2017 influx, reflecting on witnessing genocide firsthand, the testimonies that shaped her work, and the encounters that continue to define her engagement. This installment is also written in gratitude to the Center for the Study of Genocide and Justice (CSGJ) and the Liberation War Museum.
The series documents lived realities from the ground, focusing on testimony, survival, and the conditions shaping everyday life in displacement.
Entering an Unprepared World
October 2017 will always remain a defining period of my life. Looking at myself now, I feel as if I entered an unprepared world rather than simply going on a research visit. As part of the research work, I had been briefed on the Rohingya crisis, read news, reports, books, and at times even tried to memorise them, as if knowledge alone could prepare me. But that assumption collapsed the moment I first set foot in the camp.
I realized very quickly that understanding genocide in theory and witnessing its ongoing impact with my own eyes are entirely different experiences. One belongs to distance, the other to proximity. One can be contained in language, the other exceeds it.
As per the approval letter from the Office of the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner, the authorized body responsible for managing refugees in Cox’s Bazar, we were required to leave the camp by 2:30 PM. This shaped our entire routine. We had to leave the hotel early every morning, knowing that time inside the camp was limited, and that every hour had to carry the weight of documentation.
As we entered Kutupalong Bazar, I encountered a different kind of movement. It was not the everyday congestion of Dhaka. It was structured urgency. Vehicles from humanitarian organizations moved continuously. Trucks carried sacks of rice, cartons of supplies, bundles of clothing. Local people participated in the distribution process, moving in coordination with aid efforts. It felt as if the entire area was functioning as a single organism, sustained by crisis.
The Camp as Sensory Reality
When I entered the camp, it was not the visual scene but the smell that struck me first. The air itself felt altered. It carried the density of survival. Smoke from cooking fires mixed with damp earth, recently cut hills, poor drainage, and raw soil. The smell was not a single source, but a layered condition.
Alongside this came the soundscape. Children crying. Adults speaking in strained voices. The heavy breathing of people who had walked for days. Movement everywhere, yet with no sense of stability. Bamboo shelters stood in uneven lines, newly built and fragile, holding lives that had been abruptly displaced.
The colours of the camp were equally striking. The blue of tarpaulin sheets stretched across the landscape. The brown of mud covered the ground and people’s feet. The grey of smoke lingered in the air. And occasionally, the raw colour of blood appeared in places where violence had not yet fully receded into memory.
Even now, these colours do not feel like ordinary recollections. They remain as forms of testimony, embedded in memory as evidence of what I witnessed.
Rethinking “Genocide”
My understanding of the word “genocide” changed fundamentally during that visit. Until then, it had existed for me as a category tied primarily to mass killing. But in the camp, I saw that genocide also operates through the destruction of the conditions necessary for life.
Food, water, shelter, safety, and dignity were not guaranteed. They were uncertain, unevenly distributed, and often insufficient. People were not only surviving violence. They were surviving its aftermath, which extended into every aspect of daily existence.
That is why the term “ethnic cleansing” never felt adequate to me. It carries a certain neutrality, a distance that softens the violence it describes. I chose to call it genocide because what I witnessed affected not only bodies, but the very possibility of living.
In 2017, many, including scholars and policymakers, referred to the Rohingya crisis as ethnic cleansing. But such language often reflects political caution rather than empirical reality. Today, there is far less ambiguity. What happened has increasingly been recognized as genocide. But at that time, the language itself felt like a site of struggle.
Testimonies That Remain
The testimonies I collected during that trip continue to live within me.
My first female survivor, who endured horrific sexual violence.
The seven-year-old girl who became separated from her mother while fleeing.
The little boy who mistook detergent powder for coffee, unable to distinguish between survival and danger.
The young man who lost his mental balance after witnessing the killing of his entire family.
These were not simply narratives to be recorded. They altered the way I understood suffering, memory, and responsibility. Over time, I realized that these encounters were not temporary moments. They became the foundation of my engagement with human rights work.
The Boy Tied to a Bamboo Pole
One afternoon, while returning from collecting testimonies, I saw a young boy tied to a bamboo pole. The image was immediate and difficult to process. He stood under the open sky, without a shirt, wearing only a lungi. His body was covered in mud, marked by fresh wounds, and a blood-stained bandage wrapped around his knee.
I approached him instinctively. The boy looked at me and smiled. It was a childlike expression, but fractured, as if something within him had broken and could not return. He began repeating, “I love you… I love you…”
Around me, others reacted with a mix of discomfort and resignation. They warned me not to go near him. They said he was mentally unstable. Their tone carried familiarity, as if this condition had already been normalized.
Later, a Rohingya woman told me that he had witnessed the killing of his family by the Myanmar military. Since then, he had lost his mental balance. Like many others, he had crossed into Bangladesh during the first wave of displacement in 2017.
That encounter stayed with me in a way that no written testimony could. It forced me to confront the psychological dimension of genocide. It is not limited to physical destruction. It extends into the mind, into memory, into the ability to relate to the world.
Even now, I find myself asking questions that have no answers. Is he still alive? What kind of life has he lived over the past nine years? Did anyone provide him with care, or did he remain within that condition, visible yet unattended?
What remains most difficult is the feeling of leaving. I walked away without being able to intervene, without knowing what would follow. That sense of incompleteness continues to shape how I think about responsibility.
A Child Searching for Her Mother
Before that, I had encountered a seven-year-old girl whose story reflected another form of loss. She had survived the violence in Myanmar, made the journey to Bangladesh, but became separated from her mother along the way.
When I saw her, she was playing with another child. But her face carried something else. It held a quiet sadness, combined with a fragile expectation that her mother might still appear. It was an expression suspended between hope and absence.
She seemed to embody more than her own story. In that moment, she represented countless families who had been separated in the chaos of displacement.
I still wonder whether she found her mother, or whether that separation became permanent.
Humanity Amid Crisis
Yet the diary is not only marked by suffering. There were also moments that revealed the persistence of humanity.
A young scout volunteer worked with us as an interpreter. One day, I asked him whether his parents objected to him missing school. He smiled and replied, “No, apu, they are the ones encouraging us to help. Everyone is coming forward. And I am happy that my language helps you. If these stories are shared, others will know.”
At that time, I did not fully recognize the significance of his words. My attention was absorbed by the weight of the testimonies I was collecting. But in retrospect, I understand that he represented a different kind of response to crisis. Not withdrawal, but participation. Not silence, but contribution.
His presence demonstrated that even within extreme suffering, there are acts of agency and solidarity that sustain collective life.
Displacement and Loss of Identity
I also remember a Majhi who helped us connect with survivors. Many Rohingya were initially unwilling to speak. They were afraid, still processing trauma, and unfamiliar with their surroundings in Bangladesh. As a conservative community, they were also cautious about engaging with outsiders.
It was the Majhi who made those connections possible.
At first glance, he appeared ordinary. A white shirt, a lungi, nothing to distinguish him. But his story revealed a profound transformation. In Myanmar, he had owned land, maintained livestock, lived in a large house, and held social standing. Displacement erased all of that.
In Bangladesh, Rohingya are not legally recognized as refugees. They are categorized as Forcibly Displaced Myanmar Nationals. This classification itself reflects a limitation in recognition. It defines presence without granting belonging.
The Majhi’s life illustrated how genocide does not only displace people physically. It dismantles social identity, economic stability, and the structures through which people understand themselves.
Speaking as a Witness
On our way back to Dhaka, our research team participated in an international conference on the Rohingya crisis. It was the first time I spoke before a large audience of researchers and human rights practitioners.
My responsibility was to present testimonies of women survivors of sexual violence.
As I began speaking, my voice trembled. At certain moments, it felt as though it might fail entirely. When I spoke about a survivor who was eight months pregnant, the emotional weight became almost overwhelming. I paused briefly, close to tears, but continued.
That moment marked a shift. I was no longer speaking only as a researcher. I was speaking as someone who had witnessed, and who now carried the responsibility of conveying that experience.
I realized then that witnessing is not passive. It demands articulation, but also care in how that articulation takes place. Some experiences must be spoken. Others must be documented with restraint.
Memory, Responsibility, and Continuation
I remain deeply indebted to the Center for the Study of Genocide and Justice and the Liberation War Museum. They gave me more than a role within a research team. They gave me access to a reality that reshaped my sense of purpose.
On 3 November 2017, when I read the published testimonies from “The Testimony of Sixty on the Crisis of the Rohingyas in Myanmar,” I cried quietly. I did not want those emotions to remain as grief alone. I wanted them to take the form of responsibility. That moment marked a decision, even if I did not articulate it fully at the time.
The Rohingya community has changed me, not only as a professional, but as a person. Walking alongside this community is no longer separate from who I am.
Today, I see changes that were not visible then. Adolescents are learning. Young people are stepping into leadership roles. Rohingya youth are organizing initiatives and managing their own spaces. These developments do not erase past suffering, but they indicate forms of continuity and resilience.
Yet even now, certain images remain unchanged. When I sit alone, I still see the boy tied to the bamboo pole. His face, his smile, his voice repeating those words.
Looking back, I realize that the beginning of my life’s work was not in a classroom or a theory. It was in that field visit.
Luthfunnahar Shancyi is a law graduate and human rights professional. She entered the humanitarian sector during the 2017 Rohingya genocide response, an experience that shaped her work in transitional justice and capacity building. She is also engaged in youth-based community advocacy in Bangladesh, focusing on empowering the next generation of human rights defenders.
