KÜBRA GÖKÇE
Weekly Zaman
December 10, 2012
‘Stateless people are some of the most forgotten people in the world
today. Statelessness is a complex issue that many people in the world
today don’t even know exists. Many people can’t even fathom that a
government would intentionally deny an entire group of people
citizenship, that governments would use citizenship as a tool and in
some cases a weapon to exclude and marginalise’
Greg Constantine is an award-winning photojournalist from the United
States who is currently based in Southeast Asia. Since beginning his
career as a photographer, he has worked on numerous projects, including
“Moments from Modern Day Edo” (about Tokyo), “A Matter of Exposure”
(about North Korean Refugees) and “The Road to Re-Entry” (about formerly
incarcerated women in Watts, Los Angeles).
For the past six years, he has been working on a long-term project
titled “Nowhere People”, which documents the impact that statelessness
and the denial of citizenship has on ethnic minority groups around the
world. He especially focuses on the struggles of the Rohingya minority
ethnic group in Burma, who have been stripped of legal citizenship by
the government and whose situation he describes as one of the “darkest
and most dire”. With an aim to highlight the issue of global
statelessness, his work has been widely published and exhibited in many
countries, including Bangladesh, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan,
Switzerland, Ukraine, Hong Kong and Kenya.
In an interview with Weekly Zaman, Greg Constantine speaks about
“Nowhere People” and explains how the project today serves as a reminder
of the existence of the millions of stateless people who he describes
as “the most forgotten people in the world today”.
I’d like to ask about your personal history before we talk about your
project. Can you tell us a little about yourself and how you got into
photography?
I’m from the US and started my career as a photographer about eight
years ago. I work primarily on long-term, self-assigned projects. My
first project focused on North Korean refugees, many of which were
children who were stateless. After living in Tokyo and then Los Angeles,
I moved to Southeast Asia in late 2005 to begin work on my project
“Nowhere People”.
Your work “Nowhere People” has been exhibited in several key cities
around the world and also came to London’s Royal Albert Hall last
November. Can you tell us about “Nowhere People”?
Originally, “Nowhere People” was going to be about one to two years long
and focus primarily on stateless communities in Asia. I self-funded the
project from 2006 to the end of 2008 because it was next to impossible
to find anyone willing to provide funding. Slowly, the project started
to receive attention. My work on statelessness in Asia was featured in a
huge photo spread in the International Herald Tribune and the New York
Times as well as some other really important regional magazines, which I
think are crucial to the success of this project reaching important
audiences.
After about one-and-a-half years of working on the project, it became
clear to me that this was a global issue, so I decided to expand my
project beyond Asia. I’ve collaborated with the UNHCR [the UN Refugee
Agency] three times since 2008 [in Kenya, Ukraine and the Ivory Coast].
The UNHCR played a very important role in helping me to expand the
project. Since then, I’ve managed to continue the project through
grants. In late 2010, the UNHCR and UPS sponsored a large travelling
exhibition of my “Nowhere People” project, and it is this exhibition
that has travelled to all these key cities around the world.
What drew you to the issue of statelessness?
For one, no other photographer had really dedicated any length of time
specifically on this issue. It really was uncharted territory, which was
an opportunity for me. I also felt the issue of statelessness and the
denial of citizenship touched on many themes that are fundamental to the
way we live today -- that are fundamental to the way societies are
administered, function and operate. Statelessness, and particularly the
deliberate denial of citizenship by a state or people in power,
challenges many of our definitions of identity. It exposes the power of
the state over who belongs and who does not belong. It challenges the
principles of an open and democratic society. It also challenges the
fundamentals of who has the right to have human rights, if that makes
any sense.
Besides all of this, history is a huge element of the issue of
statelessness. To understand why many people are actually stateless, you
need to understand how they became stateless; you need to learn the
history, understand the history and, unfortunately, many of these
histories are forgotten. ...
Stateless people are some of the most forgotten people in the world
today. Statelessness is a complex issue that many people in the world
today don’t even know exists. Many people can’t even fathom that a
government would intentionally deny an entire group of people
citizenship, that governments would use citizenship as a tool and in
some cases a weapon -- like in Burma -- to exclude and marginalize
people. So, I’ve been motivated to help shed light on the plight of many
of these communities and also try to expose their stories to a wider
audience.
You focused in particular on the issue of the Rohingya from Burma. Who
are the Rohingya and why did you decide to write a book about them?
The Rohingya are a Muslim minority group who have lived in the Rakhine
State -- or historically known as Arakan -- in western Burma for
generations. Today, they primarily live in the isolated townships of
North Rakhine. They have been one of the most oppressed minority groups
in the world for a very long time. Over the past 40 years, successive
Burmese governments have claimed that the Rohingya are not from Burma
but are migrants from Bangladesh and, even though during British
colonial times there was a migration of people from the Indian
subcontinent into Burma, the Muslim community [in] Rakhine have lived in
Rakhine for centuries. Still, the Burmese authorities have done just
about all that they can to exclude the Rohingya community from belonging
to Burma. The Rohingya are denied most social, civil and economic
rights and have been subjected to any number of human rights abuses.
Rohingya have fled the abuse in Burma for decades. In 1978, 250,000
Rohingya fled Burma after a crackdown by Burmese authorities and the
same thing happened again in 1991, when another 250,000 fled a
crackdown. Right now, it is estimated that up to 300,000 Rohingya live
in Bangladesh, most as unrecognised refugees.
As for my book, all of the work I have done on the Rohingya over the
past six years has been done in Bangladesh. Their situation in
Bangladesh, just like in Burma, is fluid. It changes, and I believe
their story is one of the most serious cases of human rights abuse in
the world today and one of the most extreme cases of protracted
statelessness as well. To tell the story of the Rohingya the way I felt
it needed to be told required me to spend years on the project. ... The
book form permits me to tell the story the right way, the way the story
deserves to be told, the way in which I think people will have a much
better understanding of how complex and tragic the story of the Rohingya
is.
You’ve been photographing the Rohingya Muslims for about six years now.
Do you see a change in their situation and have they benefited from the
recent reforms in Burma?
In the six years I’ve been photographing the Rohingya in Bangladesh,
their situation has not improved at all. And the stories Rohingya have
told me who have come out of Burma have not improved at all, either.
Their situation has deteriorated. In Burma, the abuse they face at the
hands of the Burmese security force, called Nasaka, has gotten worse.
Not only have poor Rohingya fled North Rakhine in the past few years,
but middle class Rohingya from North Rakhine have fled as well.
Restrictions on the right to get married and the complications that come
with these restrictions have gotten worse. Land seizure has gotten
worse. The inability to travel freely has left Rohingya in North Rakhine
destitute, with no other choice but to leave their homeland for
Bangladesh. In southern Bangladesh, the Rohingya face growing
intolerance, as was evident in the violent crackdown against them in
2012.
Bangladesh is a poor, overpopulated country with limited resources. Yes,
this is true, but the neglect the Rohingya have faced in Bangladesh is a
huge part of the larger story. And even though people criticise
Bangladesh’s response to the Rohingya, one thing everyone needs to keep
in mind -- the international community, EU, USA, ASEAN, etc. -- is that
the root cause of the plight of the Rohingya rests with the abuse and
exclusion they face in Burma. Have the Rohingya benefited from the
recent reforms in Burma? Absolutely not. And a lot of other people in
Burma have not benefited from the reforms as well, so the big question
to many would be how can these reforms be considered legitimate when an
enormous percentage of the population in Burma, including 800,000
Rohingya in Rakhine, have not seen much benefit from them?
What makes the Rohingya different from other stateless populations
around the world?
For me, since I started my project “Nowhere People”, I’ve documented
many groups of people who are stateless but, of all the groups, I think
the outlook for the Rohingya has always been the darkest and most dire,
specifically because there seems to be so little hope for solution in
sight for them. One thing people need to recognise is that most
stateless people are not refugees. They have never left the country of
their birth but, mostly because of discrimination and intolerance, they
are denied citizenship and the right to belong to their country of
birth. Statelessness is often inherited from one generation to the next,
so, in many places, generations of stateless people exist in their own
countries, unrecognised, denied most fundamental rights and unable to
belong to the larger fabric of society. The Rohingya is one of the only
groups of people in my project who are also refugees. Successive Burmese
governments, and specifically the Burmese government force called
Nasaka, which is only found in the Rakhine State and nowhere else in
Burma, have made life so miserable for the Rohingya, whether it be
through abuse, extortion, forced labour, arbitrary land seizure or
radical administrative measures like restricting the Rohingya’s ability
to travel freely or restricting their ability to get married. They have
no choice but to flee Burma to other countries, mostly Bangladesh.
For the billions of people on this planet who do have birth
certificates, an ID card, a passport -- can you describe the pain
stateless people feel?
The situation for stateless people is different all over the world.
Their histories are different and the reasons why they have become
stateless and continue to be stateless are different as well. But they
do share some commonalities. Probably the biggest pain stateless people
feel is this sense of paralysis for not being able to go about their
lives like other human beings, this sense of having almost no control
over their futures. Yes, stateless people are amazing in their ability
to find ways to exist and make it from one day to the next, but,
overall, the obstacles that have been built up in front of them are
often too much for them to overcome, and I think this gives stateless
people an overwhelming sense of helplessness. Being denied the ability
to have vital documents, being denied the ability to have or pursue and
educations, being denied the ability to own land or be legally employed
or travel freely are all obstacles stateless people are faced with every
day. More importantly, it is the sense of not belonging that is painful
for stateless people. To be born in a place -- the same place as your
father and his father -- and be denied the right to actually belong and
be recognised by that place is also painful.
