CrossingCulture

★IMMERSION: REFUGEES FROM MYANMAR

Tuesday, 8 May 2012 • 06:33 • 0 comments

Name : Mohamed Hashim

Age : 30 years old

Nationality : Burmese

Status : Married with 2 child

Sibling : 14 from 15 siblings

Malaysia Address : Taman Mulia

Language Spoken : Burma, Thailand, India, Bangladesh and Bahasa Malaysia

On last Wednesday, 2 Mei, we met with Hashim, a worker in a food stall in Selayang. We interviewed him for around 1 hour. We found out that he is a refugee from Myanmar or Burma as he calls it. He comes here 12 years ago to seek for job. He follows his friend with bus to Malaysia. We were shocked to hear that the cost of one-way trip to Myanmar cost him around rm3000++ and around rm900++ for one-way trip to Malaysia. Since 12 years he had come to Malaysia, he had gone back to Myanmar for 4 times and stayed for 1 year for each time.

We started of by having him to describe his life back in Myanmar. He told us that life in Myanmar was hard. Muslim was not given work opportunity, can not walk around, killed, and is encouraged to migrate, no marriage permit and many others. They had to eat only the food that they found. Muslim has no freedom. They have to stay in village as he calls it. I quoted a word by him ‘Sana hidup susah, itu bukan negara kita’. Majority of people there, Chinese and Thailand were against Islam and Muslim was often being discriminated. They had to build the house and mosque by themselves. Among issues that often arise include trespass of the village and fighting.

Talking about marriage and religion, Muslim was encouraged to married Muslim. If they want to married Burmese, they had to convert to their religion. He had been married for 8 years and had no intention to married Malaysian girl. He had been missing his child and hope to bring them here after he had stabilize (~~so sweet!). After marriage also, female Myanmar wears along clothes and proper hijab.

In terms of weather, compared to Malaysia, Myanmar had 6 month of rain, 3 months of hot and remaining 3 months for cold weather. Other than that, Myanmar and Malaysia are also different in terms of food. He is not used of eating sweet and cream. They usually eat very spicy food. Fortunately, there were a lot of Burma stall near his house. So he would normally buy plain food and buy Burma dishes at that shop. Since living in Malaysia, he had only tasted Nasi Lemak once and never tries it again.

Instead of the differences, he loves Malaysia very much. He had very grateful for having a work here. Since living in Malaysia, he is able to sent some money back to Myanmar, settle his debt and to have some saving. He want to improve his family condition of living in Myanmar. He had little difficulties in adjusting to Malaysia lifestyle as Malaysian is very friendly and helpful. There are plenty of job opportunity in here and the weather and food is not that much different.

From the interview, I learn that refugees had very strong motivation and determination. They learn life through hardship. They work their hardest to survive each day. Just to continue their living. Malaysian should be grateful that we are born in a peace country with our religion had a secure position in society. Other than that, they are very defensive of themselves and their territory. They had little confidence for local people and are very much worried of people perception of them. However, we can see that they want nothing more than a better life for themselves. That is why they are here. But because of system, they were look down as a thrown away.

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