Guest contributor

Seán Barry

From exiled Rohingya poet Mayyu Ali comes a story about belonging, confusion, and loss, told with purpose and poetic restraint, in order to set the record straight.

A book that almost never saw the light of day, written while the author was in exile after finding himself at odds with a Rohingya militant group, has now appeared in English. 

From the opening dedication, Eradication shows that it is not a personal lament. Mayyu Ali tells a deeply personal story that is emblematic of a collective journey: an account of Rohingya life in Rakhine (Arakan) State in the decades leading up to, and including, the genocide of 2017.

Rather than beginning in crisis, the book begins with memories, textures, and a strong sense of place. It describes the traditions and rhythms of a people who belonged and had a connection with their land – people who did not see themselves in the way much of the world, through media depictions, would later come to see them.

Mayyu Ali paints a picture of naive halcyon days in Arakan spent running to the Purma River, playing in bamboo forests, and watching morning mist settle on the Mayu Mountains. 

He writes about learning the Burmese alphabet, singing the national anthem, and the pride of wearing the official school uniform of green longyi and white shirt. He remembers sharing classrooms with Rakhine and Hindu children. An upbringing that might resonate with many from Myanmar.

As Mayyu Ali grows older and becomes more conscious of the world around him, the book too becomes more conscious of the pressures building on his community. It shows the tightening of restrictions and surveillance from the Myanmar military and allied local authorities through everyday encounters and small shifts in tone. 

Pressure accumulates steadily and insidiously, and we experience it from Ali’s position of confusion: why is this happening? Comparing this experience to reading a work of dystopian fiction would risk softening the reality that this occurred on a mass scale, but the psychological strain under which the reader experiences the sense of reality quietly going askew is deeply impactful.

There is a moment in the book where Mayyu Ali describes repeatedly asking himself what he or his people had done to deserve what was happening, and he writes that in those days he carried “the bitter taste of injustice” in his mouth. 

What stands out is that this book is not bitter. It is honest, frank, and dignified. That may be one of its major achievements. It allows the reader to feel the injustice fully without being instructed on how to feel. And because of that, the reality of what follows feels all the more unjust.

One of the most affecting narrative threads is his childhood friendship with Aung Naing, a Rakhine Buddhist boy from the same village. They were born in the same year, went to the same school, and shared, as Ali writes, “the same dream.” 

The book returns to this friendship at key moments, using it to show the slow and disorienting shift from coexistence to exclusion.

“When we finally arrived at the district education office, Aung Naing told the official, ‘We have come to apply for the teaching posts.’ I said the same thing with a Rakhine accent so that he wouldn’t guess my identity. The man gave me a knowing smirk and I felt humiliated. Once again.” 

This is a moment he will later recognise as the beginning of two very different futures, and in the story comes just before the eruption of communal violence in Arakan in 2012.

Although the book was written with journalist Émilie Lopes and later translated into English by Siba Barkataki, Ali’s voice is strongly present. 

He is the perspective through which the story is lived. This makes Eradication a compelling read. Its strength is not only the story it tells, but how it tells it. It is a story, written by a poet, that also serves as a crucial historical record.

Since the book was first written, the situation it describes has not improved. Camps in Bangladesh have grown. Aid has diminished. Movement remains restricted. 

The question of whether the current generation of Rohingya that were forced from their land will ever return home to Arakan remains unanswered. The absence of their voices in the rooms where decisions are made makes books like Eradication feel vitally important.

Seán Barry is a Chiang Mai-based freelance journalist and audio producer, with a focus on authoritarianism, human rights, and humanitarian aid. He first visited Myanmar in 2015.