A Century of Rohingya Exile: The Life of Sokina Khatun
- Ahtaram Shin
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Story by Ro Harez Khan
Every morning when I wake in the camp, the air is thick with dust and the heavy density of bad smells. I see crowds of children, the quiet hardship of elderly people sitting in silence, and the long line of sick people at the clinics. They lack cleanliness, adequate clothes, work, and the resources appropriate for their age. I find myself continually drawn to speak with those silent old people, whose lips seem to hold decades of pain.
My name is Ro Harez Khan. I was 9 years old when I fled to Bangladesh. I don't remember much about the ancestral lives and experiences that shaped those decades of pain. Now I am 17 years old and studying in Grade 10 at a community high school. I have become genuinely fascinated with hearing the life stories of elderly people.
As I was walking through a narrow pathway in Camp 16, I spotted an elderly woman named Sokina Khatun. She is 110 years old and was sitting in a tarpaulin shelter on the wet ground.
Her eyes are cloudy with age and her hair white, but her memory seems sharp as she watches people rush for water, mothers call their children, and elderly men lean on sticks. She has seen this scene before.
I gently greeted her with “Salaam” and asked, “How is your life, Dadi (grandma)?”
She quietly said, “Now it is the third time I have fled in my life. 1978… 1992… and again in 2017. Each time, I left my home not knowing if I would ever return.”
Sokina was born in Yanma Kyawn Taung, near Taung Bazar in Buthidaung, Arakan State. She describes her childhood softly. With teary eyes, she talks about her early peace and her long cycle of displacement.
“We had lands, cattle, and a peaceful village,” she says. “We lived a simple life. But we lived with dignity.”
But that dignity slowly slipped away as restrictions tightened and racism hardened. Her people were denied rights, movement, and safety in a systematic strategy over time. She was already an adult when soldiers entered her village in 1978. Her voice trembles as she recalls the panic.
“Once we had peaceful rural luxury with our properties and ownership,” she said. “There was very little food in the camps. No proper water. No medicine. Many people died. Many families lost their loved ones.”
The refugee camp is a place of temporary survival, not living. Mothers struggled to feed their children. Men stood helplessly in long lines for food. Children cried from hunger while waiting to return home and start life over again.
When the Rohingya returned to Myanmar, the world assumed their suffering was over. But for Sokina, displacement became a recurring nightmare. Their house was destroyed. Their land was taken. Movement was restricted, and their identity withdrawn.
Men were forced to do unpaid labor (Coli) and porter for the military. Checkpoints surrounded every village and monitored every movement.
“We returned twice, but it was no longer home or free from oppression,” she says. “We lived like culprits and prisoners in our own land.”
There was a systematic scheme to eradicate us. In 1982, the Myanmar government passed the notorious citizenship law that excluded the Rohingya from recognised ethnic groups, withdrew our rights, and confiscated our lands.
“They made our name illegal, took away our identity, and put restrictions in every layer of our lives,” she said quietly, with tears.
The Second and Third Exile
The Rohingya have been forced to flee repeatedly like migrant birds — in 1962, 1976, 1992, 2012, 2016, 2017, and 2024. From each region, people walked miles across the border again and again.
“When I fled in 1978 and 1992 and returned, I didn’t think I would have to see Bangladesh again. But fate brought me here a third time.”
Although the Myanmar military bulldozed Rohingya villages, Sokina remembers every inch of her lands, rivers, hills, and every path of her village.
“I am old now, but I still dream of my home. My last wish is to return to our country and die there so that my grave will be with my ancestors,” she said.
She pauses, looking at the sky as if speaking to someone far away. “My only wish here is that our children live without fear. They deserve a life better than the one we had.” Before I leave, she holds my hand with surprising strength. “Write our story,” she says. “The world should know we are still here.”
Sokina’s words are not just her own. They are the story of every Rohingya who has been denied citizenship, land, and the right to exist. It is the story of historical oppression across generations, a community whose hope refuses to die, still dreaming of returning to their lands.
Edited By Ahtaram Shin