“I looked out my window and saw smoke coming from the village across the river. At first I thought it was a casual fire. But then I heard shooting, and I saw people were trying to swim across the river. We knew that our village would be next. I grabbed what I could carry and ran toward the mountain. We hid in the bushes all day. There were thousands of us on that mountain. Anyone who tried to talk was shushed. We looked down on our village and watched them burn our houses. Before they burned mine, they carried everything out. They took all my furniture. They took two hundred bags of lentils. I’m a schoolteacher, but I owned a lot of farmland. I paid taxes on my land for decades. I have all my paperwork. I have all my receipts. But they took it all from me. I wasn’t able to bring a single grain of rice with me. These papers are all I have. They are worthless now. But my hope is that one day they’ll have value again.”
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This week I’m sharing a series of first hand accounts from Rohingya refugees. The Rohingya are a persecuted ethnic minority who have been violently evicted from Myanmar by Buddhist extremists. Over the past year, nearly 700,000 Rohingya have been driven from their homes and are now residing in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Their living conditions are already dire, and monsoon season is approaching. As we share their stories, we are raising money to help build inexpensive bamboo houses for these refugees. (They are currently living in plastic tents.) Bamboo houses can be built for $600 a piece, and we’ve raised enough for nearly 1000 so far. Please consider donating: http://bit.ly/2H0w5lm
I am dismayed by the the term “Buddhist extremists”. I always thought Buddhism to be peaceful and respectful. Sad to see that it too can be taken to an extreme low.
Two Wheels To Nowhere 
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