Saiful huq omi biography template
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“I came from a family of teachers and I have heard stories from the children that touched my heart, but I did not know at the time that this experience would plant a seed in my heart for something to follow up on,” he explained over the phone. In 2012, that seed took on the shape of the beginnings of a photography school in Dhaka, called Counter Foto, and it has since published the first photo periodical written in Bengali.
His Rohingya project gained him a grant from the Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund. Initially, I just wanted to observe and talk to some of these refugees and listen to their stories as much as I can,” said Omi as he recounted those early days. Migrants often travel first to Thailand by boat, and then continue overland to northern Malaysia, while some go further south to Indonesia via the waters of the Strait of Malacca and the Andaman sea.
In May of 2015, as hundreds of Rohingya refugees desperately attempted to reach Malaysia, the Malaysian Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, insisted that they stay away.
His father was a professor at the University of Dhaka and during the height of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War—which lasted for eight and a half months—the university was at the center of many political activities. Considered to be one of the most persecuted communities in the world the Rohingyas face every kinds of human rights violation-denial of citizenship, restriction of movement or travel, restriction on education, forced labor, land confiscation, forced eviction, destruction of homes, schools, mosques, religious persecution, ethnic discrimination, restrictions on marriage of Rohingyas, abuse of Rohingya women and elders, rape as a weapon of war, depopulation of Rohingya community, confiscation of residency/citizenship card.
Under intense international pressure, the Burmese government eventually allowed many of the Rohingya who had fled to return. “I started going there every day, and not really taking any photographs. When asked why he chose documentary photography and not commercial or advertising photography, his reply was: “I want to tell stories through my pictures and hopefully they can bring about changes.
Rohingya continue to be used as forced laborers on roads and at military camps.
In 1978, a Burmese army campaign of killing, rape, destruction of mosques, and religious persecution drove 167,000 Rohingya across Burma’s porous border with Bangladesh.
Saiful is represented by Polaris Images, and published his first photo book, Heroes Never Die - Tales of Political Violence in Bangladesh, in 2006. The minority group also face further discrimination as they are not allowed to vote and barred from entering professions such as medicine and law.
Sectarian violence against the Rohingya began in the late 1970s but gained international media attention in 2012 following the Rakhine State riots which left tens of thousands of Rohingya being displaced in Myanmar, and many more thousands forced to flee.
However, in 1982, when General Ne Win’s government enacted the Citizenship Law of Burma, the Rohingya people were denied their citizenship rights and almost overnight they were thus stripped of their nationality and rendered stateless.
The Disowned and the Denied
After Burma gained independence from Britain in 1948, civil war broke out when many ethnic nationalities and the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) took up arms against the central government headed by U Nu.
In Rakhine State, both Rakhine and Muslim groups formed armed opposition groups that fought against the government. It has become such a success that Omi said in just two and a half years the school has taught over a thousand students spread across three campuses, two in the area of Dhaka and a third in the port city of Chittagong. A photography festival akin to the annual Visa pour l’Image Perpignan—albeit on a much smaller scale—is scheduled to take place in November of this year.
In addition to being a still-photographer, the multi-disciplinary Omi has also worked as a producer and director for film and television.
Courses range from basic to advance, it has a one-year diploma program, and an international master class as well as workshops conducted by working professional photographers and artists in their chosen fields. His early project titled, “Heroes Never Die: Tales of Political Violence in Bangladesh: 1989-2005” won him the All Roads National Geographic Award in 2006.
Rejected by the Bangladeshi government and fearing persecution in Burma, it is estimated that close to half a million Rohingya are living illegally in Bangladesh.
Very recently with the support of the international agencies, donors and human rights organizations, Rohingyas have been resettling in the USA, UK, Sweden, and Australia and to few other countries in Europe.
136: I Am Rohingya
Since 2009, Bangladeshi photographer Saiful Huq Omi has been documenting the lives of the Muslim ethnic minority, generally known as the Rohingyas, who live in northern Rakhine State, western Burma.