This evening, 13 November 2025, we had the privilege of attending an event dedicated to the forgotten genocide — the ongoing genocide of the Rohingya people.

The 20-minute documentary was heavy, raw, and deeply confronting; the result of a three-year project capturing the pain, resilience, and humanity of the Rohingya people. The emotional weight carried into the panel discussion that followed, featuring Noor Aziza, Sara Saleh, and Craig Foster, moderated by Zaki Haidari – voices of truth, courage, and conscience.

The Rohingya are an Indigenous Muslim ethnic group from Rakhine State, Myanmar. They have lived there for centuries, long before modern borders were drawn. In 1982, the Myanmar government stripped them of their citizenship, rendering them stateless in their own homeland. Since then, they’ve endured relentless persecution: villages burned, women violated, families displaced, and generations forced into exile.

Today, they remain the largest stateless population in the world. Those who escape to countries like Malaysia or Indonesia are often criminalised simply for seeking safety.

Stateless and displaced, the Rohingya face hate wherever they go – even online, when they dare to speak for their own people…  Hate is not natural. It is learned and manufactured by those who profit from division: politicians, media, corporations.  And it’s time we face the uncomfortable truth: racism exists within the Muslim community too. Racism towards Black people and those of darker complexions persists. Indifference, and sometimes even cruelty, towards the Rohingya plight stems from that same anti-Blackness. 

The same dehumanising language used against Palestinians has long been used against the Rohingya. It’s the same playbook. 

There is selective care. We must build intersectionality; it is no longer optional – it’s essential.

The Rohingya have been deliberately made invisible – their suffering dismissed as a distant problem. It’s rooted in anti-Blackness, racism, and the hyper-invisibility also experienced by First Nations peoples.

You can’t stand for a Free Palestine while ignoring anti-Blackness, denying that you’re on stolen land, or getting defensive when Rohingya, Sudan, Congo, etc are mentioned.  Equality, justice, and freedom must be for everyone.

Imagination is the playground of the oppressed. For the Rohingya — and for Palestinians, West Papuans, Congolese, Sudanese, and other displaced communities living in the diaspora — imagining safety, justice, and freedom is itself an act of defiance. Imagination is not escapism; it is survival. It keeps hope alive, allows communities to reclaim their voices, and charts a path toward liberation long before the world catches up.

Many in the older generation remain silent out of fear of losing what they have. But the younger generation is thinking differently — about what we can build, create, and change together. The future is hopeful. Because until all are free, none of us are free.

Thank you, Addison Road Community Organisation, for organising this powerful and necessary event, and for continuing to create spaces where truth, justice, and humanity are centred.