A young businessman who risked his life to witness Rohingya “ghettos” in Burma today called on Londoners to donate to the Red Cross as he set out to raise awareness of the crisis.
James Lavender, 24, spent time in September in Rakhine state, where it is alleged the military has carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Muslim Rohingya people.
Mr Lavender, the founder of social enterprise “incubator” IDEAS Globally, was in Burma’s old capital, Yangon, launching a scheme for tech entrepreneurs and felt he could not be there and ignore what was going on.
Led by a guide, he managed to access a Rohingya village “banned to foreigners and media”.
Mr Lavender, who is to give a talk at University College London on his experiences, said: “When we were driving to the Rohingya village it was so dangerous and we were passed by convoys of armoured cars every five minutes. I had to find someone who was willing to help me navigate the various checkpoints to get there.
"The Rohingya are being enclosed and labelled and without any chance to move around. If they leave and go into the little town nearby, they will be killed on sight by the local people. This happened to four people the week before I arrived there, I was told.
“This means there are no jobs. There was an old man just sitting in a chair dying because he couldn’t get any medicine. Some of the children are looking after babies because others are not able to. There was very little food.
“I asked the leader what they needed and he replied ‘jobs’. I thought it was incredible and heartbreaking at the same time. I thought these guys were in the depth of suffering and still had a sense of pride and want to earn the basic provisions and not be given them. I asked if they could defend themselves and my translator got very angry and said, ‘No, we have no knives, no weapons, we are peaceful.’ He was saying they would rather die than impune their name in Myanmar [Burma].”
Despite international headlines, Mr Lavender said the Red Cross was the only charity he came across making an impact in providing food to cut-off Rohingya areas. He said: “The only organisation that had not left was the Red Cross. The night before I came one of their boats was attacked by Rakhine Buddhists because it was taking supplies to the Rohingya.”
More than 500,000 Rohingya have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh. The Red Cross has joined the UN and other organisations in providing shelter to the refugees there. After donating £25,000 to the cause, the City of London Corporation has appealed to businesses to follow its example. Mr Lavender will speak at 6pm on October 25 at UCL.
More details at facebook.com/ideasglobally.
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