The Next Generation - Young Rohingya Refugees | Exhibition @ Common Ground

As Covid restrictions ease local businesses support the Oxford Human Rights Festival fringe exhibition The Next Generation - Young Rohingya Refugees.

The Oxford Human Rights Festival run by staff and students at the Centre of Development and Emergency Practice (CENDEP), faculty of Technology, Design and Environment (TDE) at Oxford Brookes University showcases photographs taken by the Rohingya in camps in Bangladesh.

The exhibition entitled “The Next Generation - Young Rohingya Refugees’ will run at Common Ground, Little Clarendon Street from 1-30 September and will then move to Tap Social in Botley from mid October for the rest of the year. Entrance is free for both venues. The project curator will give a pre-recorded presentation on the exhibition on the evening of 17 September at Common Ground.

About: Rohingya refugees are from western Myanmar. Over the last four decades, Rohingya have been subject to persistent human rights violations and repeated mass expulsions from Myanmar. Over 750,000 refugees fled their homes in Myanmar after August 2017. Today around a million Rohingya live in the refugee camps of Bangladesh. More than half the refugees are children under the age of 18.

Pictures on exhibit: These photographs are not taken by professionals per se. This is because refugees are not permitted to work or have a profession. All the images were taken with mobile phones. In spite of this, refugees remain very interested in communicating their lived experience into something knowable for outsiders. It is the curator's wish that through these photographs we might gain some access to the moments captured in the photographs - so that we might get a glimpse of their lives, try to understand what is happening and perhaps do something about it.

Shafiur Rahman is a journalist and documentary filmmaker. He has been working on Rohingya issues since 2016. His work has been featured on CNN, BBC and other channels. His film, "Tula Toli: Testimonies of a Massacre", was the first documentary to highlight the worst massacre of the Rakhine crisis of 2017. To see more Rohingya photography, visit https://instagram.com/rohingyaphotography and check out the Rohingya photography Zine, Doc Sábbá, here https://zine.doshsabba.com Follow Shafiur on Twitter @shafiur

Elizabeth A Laskar, Co-Ordinator Oxford Human Rights Festival (OxHRF)

Common Ground, 37-38 Little Clarendon St, Oxford OX1 2HF. Events contact Adam and co-owner Piotr . Email events@littlec.co.uk Contact: Adam @CommonGroundOxford