it started with a story
It was sometime in 2014/15 when Tell Me A Story Too (tmast) was founded.
That’s the first year I heard the word refugee and connected it to a living, breathing human being. Isn’t that strange? I was 22 by then and yet I was still learning the meanings of words. We were seeing articles and pictures (less videos, in those years) about refugees every day, but we didn’t really see them.
The story was of a Rohingya refugee boy who a friend met while volunteering, who drew a bus driver in an art activity to draw their ambitions. The emotional kick came when my friend asked why he wanted to be a bus driver, and this little, young, innocent boy said:
“because that’s all I can be here.”
I never met this boy. I sincerely pray that wherever he is, he is doing okay. I wish I could tell him that it doesn’t matter to me or anyone who cares who he becomes – he was already a hero and survivor at that young age.
And if he’s still in Malaysia, living every moment of his life as a refugee here for the last 10 years – not improbable at all – you’re a survivor of both the horrors you left and the indignities you face just to exist here.
That’s more struggle than I have ever had to go through in my privileged life. I pray I never even have to live a moment like that – because I don’t even know if I have it in me to pass that test.
But each refugee out there has been given this test and struggle. It overwhelms me today as it overwhelmed me thinking about it 10 years ago.
today’s roundtable on Myanmar
My life and work have grown more intertwined with refugees and the refugee cause ever since I first heard that story 10 years ago.
I owe so much to them. But the thing I owe them most is hope – or something closer to resistance.
The problems we talked about ten years ago remain. There is still no legal framework, right to education access, right to work or right for protection for refugees in Malaysia.
In some ways, things have gotten worse. Especially for the Rohingya, my brothers and sisters, public narrative has been polluted to the extent that you know any single post or article on them will be full of sickening, racist, ugly comments – by my own Malay Muslim community. And as I learnt (almost by force, when the speaker showed a video documenting the junta’s atrocities) at the roundtable today, things in Myanmar after the 2021 coup are bad. Like genocidal bad.
It’s sad enough to hear about it. It’s tearjerking to hear the refugees and Myanmar activists speak from their hearts.
Sometimes I ask myself what cause I would like to dedicate my life’s work to. On days like today, I scold myself for thinking too much about that, when the truth is that there is endless, infinite work to be done, and to even have a choice of “pet cause” is insane privilege.
Those living it don’t get to choose their cause, they’re literally fighting for their lives.
what keeps me humble
just like what set me on the path was a story, what keeps me humble is another story.
In the initial fervour of figuring out what we Singaporean students could do for these refugees living amongst us in Malaysia (they were always there, just invisible to us), we had a meeting set up with a law lecturer at IIUM.
The agenda was to understand the legal issues surrounding the refugee issue better in Malaysia. He was very kind to explain everything patiently and answer our increasingly frustrated questions. Until I asked,
why doesn’t Malaysia just accept the refugees???
& I’ll never forget the wry smile and question returned to me:
why doesn’t Singapore?
so that’s what keeps me humble most – my home and my people might not have porous borders and invisible, struggling refugees (& stateless) living in the margins.
And some might be proud of that. But I can’t be.
Because it also means we all never had the chance to show the amount of solidarity, empathy, real actual sacrifice and good that this adopted community of mine has pouring out of every possible space, filling in every possible crack.
It means that I don’t know if it was us, if we even would help, when we struggle to have the same for fellow Singaporeans who fall through the cracks.
It also means that if one day, the unthinkable happens and we Singaporeans are desperately seeking for refuge, would I blame any of our neighbours for saying sorry not our problem? I don’t know which is worse; that, or the shame of being accepted while knowing we would have never done the same. We didn’t do the same. We are not doing the same.
So I learn. I contribute. And I stay humble, knowing that both the refugees and Malaysian society – those who fight for the cause and even the haters – have made sacrifices far greater than mine.
May we stay the path to build the future we dream of together.