Ideas - A poet's journey from being exiled to gaining citizenship

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

When Rohingya poet Mayyu Ali saw his name in print for the first time, he thought: "I exist." "Even thought my government doesn't recognize [me] I exist in my writing," he told IDEAS. The Myanmar government has targeted the Rohingyas for decades. Ali has no birth certificate, no citizenship, no human rights. He fled genocide in 2017 to live in a refugee camp in Bangladesh, until he resettled to Canada in 2021. Ali shares his life story about surviving a genocide, the power of writing poetry, and his long journey to become a citizen for the first time in his life.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the road less traveled. After all the awkwardness, disasters, and family drama, Mark Critch, is finally graduating. Maybe it's about not settling for the way things are, but making your own way. No, it's both jobs. And to move forward, he must hold on to what matters most. Don't give up on your dreams. Say goodbye to a Canadian comedy we've grown up with. Son of a Critch, the final season.

Stream now on CBC Jam. This is a CBC podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyed. As a young Rohingya man growing up in Myanmar, Mayu Ali used to hide his writing from everyone he knew. Not because he didn't believe in what he was writing, but because he didn't yet know what it meant to be a writer, or what it might cost him.

In our area, I never heard of a Rohingya poet. He would write at night, hiding his notebook from his mother when she came to check if he was asleep. Back then, writing was something private, fragile, and almost forbidden. Then one day in 2008, he met up with a friend. He was reading a magazine called The Best English Magazine. He's published in Myanmar. It's a monthly issue magazine. So in the magazine, there is a section for poetry.

So he was showing me this poetry section. So I didn't know that he was also a poet, that he also write poetry. So I finally found a companion. For the first time, writing wasn't just something he kept for himself. He realized that it could travel. So in that time, there was no internet. Smart phone doesn't exist there. And it took 15 days.

for an envelope to go from my village to Jengu. So basically, to get a response or to know if our poem is published or not, so for us it takes two to three months. There was no bookstore in his village, so they asked someone traveling to the city to bring back a copy. When it finally arrived, they searched for something very small and very big. And suddenly I saw my... name printed on a book. And I was so emotional and I was reading my name and I was reading my

poems. And yeah, so that makes me feel, okay, I exist. You know, I exist. Even my government doesn't recognize. I exist in my writing. You had never experienced that feeling before. No, this was the first time I felt. and I saw my name printed. My writing is my voice, is my existence. It's who I have, is who my people are. My name is Mayno Ali. I'm a Rohingya poet and author.

I fled to genocide in 2017, and I was living in the refugee camp in Kosovozada for four years until I was resettled to Canada in 2021. So recently I finished my master degree in University of Waterloo, and currently I live in Ottawa. On ideas, my conversation with Mayu U. Ali about identity, exile, and the power of the written word. Writing is a revolution because it's involved telling the truth, and it involves telling about my identity and who we are. To understand that revolution, we begin with a word, Rohingya.

You write, I was born of Rohingya. This word defines my religion and ethnicity, where I belong and what I ultimately am. What does it mean to you, that word, to be Rohingya? So Rohingya is myself and, you know, all my ancestors who have lived on the land and who are born there and who have died there is our ethnical identity. When I say that I am a Rohingya, that means I am also a people. I belong to a group of people and I have also my own language, my own culture, my own culture. and we have our own history,

we are also a civilization in the ancient time in the Arkhan Kingdom. In the modern nation state of Myanmar, the word Rohingya also comes with consequences. If you are a Rohingya in Myanmar, you are targeted because who you are, because you are a Muslim, because you follow Islam.

And when I was born as a Rohingya, to Rohingya parent, and my birth certificate was confiscated, and I never had a birth certificate because I am a Rohingya. And then when I grew up, and I have no human right, and I have no, you know, citizenship, so these are the other side of being a Rohingya, because Rohingya is targeted by the Myanmar government for decades. Rohingya Muslims are a minority in Myanmar, concentrated in Rakhine state, though they've been there for generations. They're considered transplants, outsiders. For decades, they've been denied citizenship, and they've been subjected to increasing discrimination and violence.

From the Gambia's legal team, Jessica Jones highlighted how the Rohingya endured long-standing denigration and hate speech from senior members of the Myanmar military. She referred to a video posted on Facebook in 2017, featuring a soldier encouraging genocidal violence against the Rohingya. He told them, and I quote, we will clear the villages where those animals live. We have guns, we have bullets, that's what we came with. With ammunition and the spirit to attack the animals we have come here. So imagine when a perpetrator targeted group of people, first they want to show these people that they are outsider they are the low people they are not the original so keeping that in their mind so and then they started saying that there is no rohingya in

Myanmar history Rohingya doesn't exist in Myanmar they are so they often refer us to illegal immigrant or Bengali people or sometimes they refer us to terrorists or enemies, you know. But we are Rohingya. We are one of the indigenous growth in Myanmar. When Mayu was a young boy, his grandfather used to tell him stories about the ancient Rohingya Kingdom of Arakhan, which stood until it was conquered by a Burmese king in 1784. I still remember when I was young, we have a ritual after the the dinner, he used to take me to his room on his bed and he used to take me on his left and he used to sing the Rohingya song, fog song and he used to share me the Rohingya history and the

fog tales. And he also used to tell me about this ancient Rohingya kingdom in Arkhan that they were a king with Muslim names like Zalalal, Shah, Salimuddin Shah during 14 to 16 centuries in Arkhan. Through those stories, Mayu's grandfather told him that the Rohingya did have a history in Myanmar, that they came from and belonged to that land. He used to have a lot of land and that he inherited from his parents. So the land is everything for us, even for him. You write, when I remember the little boy I once was,

I see a stranger who haunts my nostalgic reveries. Can you tell me about that stranger? Yeah, so in my neighborhood and the Rakhin, who are Buddhists, and also the Hindu people, the Rohingya, these three communities live together in the same neighborhood. So in my childhood, I used to have friends from these two communities. And when I go to a school and I still have this friend, you know, and we sit together on the same bench at school. We play on the same ground, you know, and we sang the same national intent together.

So we were the same. There was no fear between us in that time. When I go to market, you know, and in Tishov, I can see my father with his friend from Hindu community and the Rakhine community. And I can see that, you know, the Buddhist monk and the Muslim imam, they sit together, they see tea and coffee together. So it was beautiful. One day, when he was four or five, playing with his friends, something shifted. And suddenly people were escaping from here to there.

And we were, I was scared. and I went inside a home, and I was picking through the bamboo fence hole what was going outside. The surrounding was so quiet even that there was no dog barking. You know, all the children ran and went inside their home. And suddenly a group of Myanmar military were approaching, and I noticed there were around. 10 or 12 people. They were a Rohingya men. And some of them have no shot in their bodies.

Their hand were a calf. They were fastened by a long roof. And in front of the groove, and there is a military force. And in the middle and in the back, and they were a pointing gun toward those men. My father's arrived, and he was explaining me, this is called the force lever. Forced labor.

Post labor, yeah. And also my father was telling me that he was also once arrested and used as forced labor. As Mayu grew up, things started to change. Not all at once, but slowly in ways that were impossible to ignore. One of the clearest places he saw that change was in his beloved grandfather. One night he came back home, and he was so frustrated. He was not talking with me.

It was so strange to me because he was the person who first, you know, called me and play with me. He come back home from outside, so he was not talking to me. He was ignoring me. And I was just watching him, you know. He was shedding tear. He was not eating well. And then that night my mother told me that his land was.

confiscated in the Nassaka project. It was 2008, the same year Mayu graduated from high school. The Myanmar military was intensifying its crackdown on the Rohingya people. So the Nassaka operation is basically they will grab the Rohingya land and they will build the new homes and they will bring the Buddhist people from east side of the countries and they will repopulate in our land. So when I was experiencing my grandfather's loss and this loss of land and, you know, anger, gradually I'm learning, okay, we are significantly and particularly targeted that, you know,

that and in the future is going to be worse. And I have this fear exists. And then, yeah, and then, yeah. So my grandfather also used to tell me that it is very important for me that I keep all this document to secure and to peace office so that we can prove that we belong to this land. This is ours. You know, this is very important. Do you still have those documents? Yeah.

So we still managed to bring it here. And we lost something in August 2017. My home was born down. And we lost some of the document, but I still managed to bring something with me here. When was the first time you thought about, or you heard about the idea of human rights? So about the idea of human rights, I think it was after the violence in June 2012. So there was a sectorial violence erupted between two communities, the Rohingya and Rakhine communities. It was also the violence that created by the Myanmar military

that they can divide and make these two community furious and they take each other. And they were quite successful for this. 2012 marked a turning point from administrative violence to widespread physical violence. Like killing, arresting the people and also burning homes and the villages of the Rohingya people in northern Rakhine state.

So in that time I realized it is huge, this is too much. And this should not happen, and the world should act. You know, and then this is the moment that I realized, yeah, we are human, but we are not given any piece of human rights. And we have responsibility to protect and to walk and to rise for human rights. The world of his childhood were Buddhist priests and Muslim Amm's drank tea together. was gone. And soon, so was Mayu's ability to believe he and his childhood friends from other communities lived under the same rules and could plan for the same future.

Once I was going to Mongda Township from my home village, normally it takes two hour by bus. And then on the way, there is a Border Guard Police Headquarters in G-Camping. And in the bus, there will be around 24 passengers, both the Rohingya. Rohingya, Rock Crang and the Hindus. And then at the Shepos and the security force came and entered into our bus and yelled at us saying that all the Bengali people should get down. And I was wondering, who were Bengali here? Older Rohingya passengers got off the bus immediately.

Mayu stayed where he was. And I was sitting together with my Buddhist friend, Shao Nan. So he and I were going to downtown office to apply for a sculteisher position. He and I wanted to be the scultecia. The security force located me and get closer to me, saying that why are not you getting over? And I was reluctant to get in of. And I was looking at my friend, Rakhine friend. And the security force told me he is ta-in-ta.

That means he is indigenous. And he said, I am a Bengali, that I'm a legal immigrant, and I need to get off, and he doesn't need. So this is the moment I realized that I am completely different because of my face, my skin color, or this faith that I believe. And I went to the shakepost. When Mayu got back on the bus, he was overwhelmed by anger and frustration. I was not talking with my friend and he was sensing my anger. And I was thinking maybe I will hit my head in the window, glass of the bus, you know, all those of frustration. Yeah, and this is the moment I realized, okay, this difference matter to my government and to my country.

That difference also mattered to the official at the Education Office, where the two friends went to drop off their applications to become teachers. The officer took the application of Shawnai, and he was like just faking a smile when he was receiving my application, and saying that, oh, you are Bengali. Oh, and he was just making fun of this my implication. Mayu's dream of becoming a school teacher was over. And that same year, 2012, Sitway University in Rakhine State banned Rohingya students from campus.

Officials claimed that if the communities mixed, the risk of violence would be too high. But in his writing, Mayu was beginning to find a world where his ideas could move freely. One day is especially vivid in his memory. At some point, you actually saw someone, a Buddhist woman, read your poem. I was just wondering what that meant for you to see that. We were on a boot, a mission boot. It takes four to five hours. So on the boot, there are a group of a student and with others people.

And suddenly in my nurse raw and I saw a raccoon girl was holding the magazine, the best English magazine. The magazine that I write and where my poem is published. And then I am noticing that she's reading the poetry section. And I was trying to approach to her. I wanted to talk, to have a shot with her. I also write poems and my poem is there in the magazine that we are reading. And she was not looking at me, like ignoring me.

So it's not usual that, you know, a racangel and a Rohingya boy. make friends, you know, it's not upset that. If I tend to do this and I will be attacked by others, Rakhine men, you know. So, yeah, so when she was reading my poems in that magazine, and then I was also feeling said that, okay, I cannot communicate and I cannot rebuild myself, okay, you are reading my work, my writing. But on the other hand, I'm also happy that, okay, even though I cannot communicate, she's reading my work, she's reading a Rohingya's writing, you know, a Rohingya's writing that, you know, the government doesn't want to print, that the government doesn't want to be read or, you know, spread across the country.

So in a way you defied kind of this divide that's imposed by the authorities, by writing. Exactly, yeah. So, like, it's the Myanmar military that put this wall between this community. This is the wall that always keep us separated and keep us away from each other in the Rakhine state. But throughout our writing, so we get connected. We pass message from each other, from each side to each other. So that is why like in the world of writing, I feel myself free. I feel alive because in the wall of writing, no one can touch me.

And no one can say that I am a Bengali or I don't exist there. And also in this world there is no religions. There is no race and there is no color. Also, there is no border. Writing became a place. almost like a homeland that no one could take away from him. When I hold my pain, like I feel no one can stop me. This is the wall that I belong.

This is the wall that I can raise my voice. In the wall of writing, who I am is beautiful. Rohingya poet and human rights activist Mayu Ali, speaking to me at his home in Ottawa. This is Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyad. Hey, Nick, why should people listen to Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer? Because most of what we've been taught about the economy is just plain wrong and designed to make inequality even worse.

Well, that's cheerful, but also useful. Every week we talk to people who help explain how the economy really works and how we can make it work better for everyone, not just those of us at the very top. That's pitchfork economics. Check us out wherever you get your podcasts. August 25th, 2017, the day the Rohingya people now mark as the beginning of a genocide. Mayu Ali was working for a humanitarian organization two hours away from his hometown when he received a call. My mom was calling me saying that my village was attacked, it was burning, and they were

running. And my parents were old, and I have my brothers, elder brother who was living with them. So they tried to manage crossing the river, the river that I used to swim in my shallow. So they managed to cross the river with a rowing bull. They took refuse in another village there. And then the next day, my mom was again called me saying that that village was also a attacked by the military again. And then they decided to leave to Bangladesh. Mayu hid in a guest house, watching even foreigners begin to flee. I see them going away with the car.

And I was realizing the fear, you know, spreading across my body. You know, I was feeling shaken. And, you know, like, it's not processing. My body is not responding well. My friend Husinia arrived, and he said that his son was abandoned, his sister and his brother, while I shot dead by the military, and his mother, and he escaped. When he was knocking the door of the gas, I was not recognizing him.

He said he was not eating for last two days. And then that night, I decided. to cross the border to go to Bangladesh. It was late evening when there was a dog and we were trying to run by land and on the way we crossed several dead bodies. The longer I run, the more I realized that I'm leaving my homeland behind.

And even in that moment, I didn't realize that I'm living this homeland forever. You know, maybe I just wanted to go to see my mom to help them. You know, maybe I will come back. I didn't have the idea like I will leave as a refugees there or I will never go back to Myanmar again. They reached the Naf River, which marks the border between Myanmar and Bangladesh. In his memoir titled Eradication, Mayu describes that river as a bridge between two worlds,

one where he was stateless, and one where he, along with tens of thousands of others, would become a refugee. I witnessed the mass exodus myself and reported on it for CBC News in 2017. Well, we'd heard that people were still crossing, this was, as you know, even a few weeks after all of this started, that people were still crossing at the border near some rice fields. And so we went out there and walked through these really narrow paths that wind through the rice fields. brilliant green, lots of water around you, but these little, little muddy paths. And we saw people walking on those paths from far, far away. We approached them. We walked right across the rice field

to see them. And as we were standing there, and this mass, this column, long column of people was approaching us, this man saw us. And I guess he understood what we were doing. We were filming. And he just stopped and started talking to our camera, to Richard DeVie. He became very emotional. started crying. Here's a little bit of what we learned from him, his story. Dean Muhammad says they were firing in my area and even called us out from our home and then slit my father's throat. Sonella, after encountering that and witnessing that scene of these people fleeing, they cross the border, they make it to Bangladesh. What awaits them there?

Well, something the likes of which I have not really seen elsewhere. Nothing prepares you, or prepared me, I should say, for the scale that we saw in these camps. There were people everywhere. I have not ever seen so many people in one place. They join tens of thousands of others, living in a shocking state of desperation here. Along one major road, there are swaths of Ukiah District now covered with tents and tents. people struggling to cope. Aid groups are calling in unprecedented reinforcements. Nala Ayed, CBC News, near the Bangladesh-Myanmar border.

You wrote in your book, Exile was not an end to our suffering. Instead, it was the beginning of a struggle, that of coming back from the dead. So you're now on the other side. Why did it feel like it was coming back from the dead? Why was it just the start of your struggle? In the very beginning, all these people were crossing in days and night. No one was expecting this. No one was reading to provide shelter food, you know. And I saw it was the first night in Kosovozboza refugee camp for me. I saw a lot of women, children were crying.

They were just laying. It was raining. You know, it was just like a living hell, this scenario, you know. And some of them came with a bullet inside. their bodies. Yeah, so our suffering doesn't end there. It was another war. That world left them stuck cheek by jowl in makeshift homes put up hastily in the mud, pinned down by the relentless rain and the authorities that limited their movements and their ambitions. Life there was still marked by loss and a feeling of being trapped.

So people will come to see us. They will just show safe. somewhat of sympathy or empathy, and they just live. And we remain in the same limbo. I was feeling like an animal in a zoo. But even in the cramped confines of the camp, Mayu kept writing, not as an escape this time,

but as a way of preserving something essential. I was noticing that a lot of my friend and all these people who knew real life, we are trying to adapt their new life, learning the local language. And we have also, like, a thousand of Rohingya refugees there who have been living there since early 1990s. So when I see these people, I cannot differentiate them from these local Bengali people.

They almost look similar. They speak almost similar language, the same costume. And I'm also witnessing that also these new arrival people are also rapidly, assimilating the language and culture into the local one. And then I realized, okay, in Myanmar, our language and our identity is targeted. And I realized why oppressor always first target the language and culture or identity of a people. And I was experiencing the outcome. I was seeing all the outcome here.

You know, people are changing their language, their culture, you know, just to survive, just to fulfill their need. It is late for people to realize that, okay, we are losing the language and culture. Because language and culture are invisible. So when we say people, okay, burning home, killing people, so they can see it with their own eyes. When we say people, okay, we are losing our language and culture, they cannot see it. So it's always late for people to realize. We started a project called Rohingya Language Preservation Project.

And we conducted a major research, trying to understand the situation of the language and culture after the genocide and in displacement now. And then we interviewed, we interviewed around 285 individual people in the refugee camp in Kuzbaza. So, and then we were doing some community awareness, explaining the importance of preserving the language and concept. May you began to encourage other young Rohingya people to write

to preserve what could still be saved. So when I was empowering this new generation in the refugee camp in Kuzbazar, I started printing some books and also some of my poems that published in Myanmar magazine. And I started distributing coffees to. to Rohingya youth who are also interested in writing and reading. And one day I posted on Twitter saying that all I want is to see pen and book in the hand of the Rohingya New Generation in a state of knife and gun. There are also the Rohingya gangs in the refugee camp.

So one of the gangs later took it seriously that referring to gun and knife is also a referring to them. And their letter kept calling me on phone and keep threatening me. And they circulated my photo through their WhatsApp channel. Suddenly,

the danger wasn't just outside the camp. It was inside it too. So then you went into hiding? There are two different fear. One fear that I will be get by those gangs who are looking for me. And also the fear,

that if the Bangladeshi police or know that Her Rohingya is living out of the refugee camp, they can easily arrest me and send me to prison. After so many years of fighting to assert your identity, what did it feel like to have to hide? I would say like tougher than living as a refugee in camp because I was hiding myself. I was hiding my identity. So I am the person who is fighting, no, rising boys for this, you know, identity and language and culture, but no, I am in a situation that I need to hide from this day. Yeah, it was quite painful for me.

The cruelty, the irony, the sadness, the hardship of the fact that here they are in a country that is supposed to be their place of safety and refuge. But instead, in many respects, were at the greatest risk they ever had been and had to go into hiding while they're seeking refuge in Bangladesh. It had a real impact on me. And I think anyone who learned about what was happening to them felt compelled to do everything we could to get them out of that situation and bring them to safety. While Mayu was in hiding, Canadian human rights advocates, including 2025 CBC Massey lecturer Alex Neve, fought to bring him and his wife Shannas to safety.

First, I'd have to give credit immediately to the Canadian government. When I was approached by other Amnesty International colleagues who were the ones who first became aware of the danger that Mayu and Shannas were facing in Bangladesh and the fact that they had had to go into hiding, I immediately contacted Canadian officials and went very senior. And the response was immediate. Absolutely. Canada will get behind this case. They will be accepted for resettlement. So we had our first big step forward. And one would think that that may well have been the end of the story, because in many instances, that is the big struggle, is trying to find a country, be it Canada or some other country that will be willing to resettle a refugee,

especially in today's world. However, our big struggle, and this may seem like a strange thing to say, was the government of Bangladesh. And I knew that was going to be the case, because when I was in Bangladesh in 2019, and at the end of our mission, we had some very senior high-level meetings with Bangladeshi officials, including their foreign secretary, who was responsible for refugee matters at the time.

And he made it very clear that Bangladesh was not going to be open to what we would call third country resettlement of refugees out of Bangladesh to other countries. Now, that would seem strange for a country that is facing an enormous burden and is finding it very difficult to cope with the demands that come with, which at that point would have been around one million refugees. in a very concentrated, densely populated part of Bangladesh. But their take on it was that if they were to allow third country resettlement, that somehow that would serve as a magnet to other refugees who would want to come to Bangladesh solely for the purpose of using it as a jumping off point for resettlement to other countries.

And so if they kept that door firmly closed, in their view, that was going to dissuade significant numbers of refugees from coming to Bangladesh. We did everything we could, number one, to point out to the Bangladeshi government that that was not consistent with international law, especially when there might be a refugee who's in danger in Bangladesh, but also that there was nothing in the evidence that backed up that assertion that there were somehow hundreds or thousands. or tens of thousands of refugees who were not coming to Bangladesh but would come to Bangladesh if a slim opportunity for third country resettlement suddenly materialized, there was just nothing to back that up. But it took a long time to move the Bangladeshi government. And that went on for, I think, a good year. One day, I remember it very clearly. I was just arriving at a friend's cottage for a lovely summer weekend. And my phone was buzzing and I noticed it was a WhatsApp call from my friend Johannes, the UNHCR rep in Bangladesh. And with great jubilation in his voice,

all he said to me was, we just got the green light. And it was huge. Obviously, that was incredibly consequential for Mayu and Shanaz, who I think within six weeks of that, call arrived in Canada, so things moved quickly once the green light was given by Bangladesh. But it also, I think in many respects, was the opening for other Rohingya refugees. I don't know the full number, but I do know there are others, including in Mayu and Shana's own family, who have similarly been resettled out of Bangladesh since then. They broke the logjam. In 2021, May you arrived in Canada. August 28, 2021, I landed in Toronto airport.

A lady from immigration was smiling at me and saying that welcome to Canada. So that moment I was, this moment took me back to Myanmar when I used to visit the immigration office. Whenever I used to visit the immigration office, they used to call us Kallab. Bengali that I am no one there, you know. There are always this hatred, you know, all these racial slah used toward me. But in Toronto airport, I was feeling like I am recognized. I am accepted. And an immigration officer is treating me as a human, as who I am, you know.

So this was the first experience of, you know, new freedom, new fun freedom. The other thing to keep in mind is this was still COVID times. They had to go into quarantine upon arrival and this hotel was being used by the government for those purposes. So I believe for two weeks, Mayu and Shannas and their at that time still baby in arms, I think, had to stay in their hotel room for two weeks. And it wasn't until the end of that that I finally was able to physically meet them and spend some time with them.

We spent a whole afternoon together that first day. We went driving around Ottawa, showed them a bit of the country that was becoming home. Whenever I travel here from city to city, and on the way there is no shedposts, Sometimes I, my body react, okay, there should be the, there will be the shape pose and I need to get ready to get prepared with paper and all this thing. And then there are things that remind me like the maple tree and the Canada flag. I'm in Canada.

In Mayuse, Ottawa home, an image of a maple leaf hangs on the wall. It was painted by Shannas, Mayuse. wife. The maple leaf when we were dreaming to come to Canada, the maple leaf was a symbol of peace, freedom for us when I, with my family landed here. We were in quarantine. So I draw some, this one first, to show the gratefulness to Canada to work. As an artist for Shaanah's, maple leaf is the best art. So as a poet for me, Canada is the best poetry. So beautiful.

Wow. That is just beautiful. So you painted that while you're in quarantine? Yes, yes. These are not paint. I manage some of tamaric powder. I made my own paint. quarantine and I did it, this painting.

It's incredible. Beautiful. It's really beautiful. What is that one? So this one is very special and is very close to me. This may be my masterpiece I have ever created. It's about the situation that has happened during the genocide was happening in Arica. So this painting explained what was going on there. So the lady there, the face is the face of Rohingya.

So it's like bleeding in half side and from another part in her eyes, she is still looking for justice. So this particular thing in the lower level is the Naf River that was filled with the blood. It's very red. Yeah, it's very red. And those triangle things are the mountains that people were fleeing. And the green small people are the one. who were killing.

So green represent the military color. So they were killing this fire there. And the cycle is mass great that people were buried, Rohingya people.

So still they are, you know, looking for screaming for justice. In Mayu's office, the shelves are lined with Rohingya's cultural artifacts. Yeah, you can see the Rohingya traditional pots. So this is the beetle pot, like my grandparent, you know,

keep, used to keep the beetle and the knot and the lime inside this box. This is also, this pot is also a symbol like sobbing the gas when people come and my grandparents used to take it and serve the beetle to everyone. So, yeah, this is a way of hospitality in our culture. And we have this carosin lamb. So in our area there was no electricity. And we put kerosene oil inside and we burn it. So it's like a burning, you know, burning.

candle. So this is the candle that I used to use using it to study at night when I was studying high school in Myanmar. Mayu is now a father of two. I have two little girls. They were born here, growing here, so they don't have this, you know, opportunity to sue it. So we managed to bring it here. And sometimes I take my boat girls. and take them here and explaining them. This is, this object is called this, and we use this object for this purpose

so that they know that this is part of our culture, you know? I'm just curious, what do you want your daughters to get out of, you have the art here, your husband has the artifacts that are Rohingya origin. What do you want, what's the picture you want them to have in their mind? So for me, for both of us, it's different. So collectively for me is they know that they are from us, from Rohingya. And also I let them explore the Canadian life so that they can be free and enjoy life. So my daughter doesn't speak Rohingya, but my husband works so hard to preserve the

Rohingya language. So sometimes people tell me why your own daughter cannot speak in Rohingya. So I would like to tell them, yes, my husband and we are a part of that past and we carry the burden, we would like to give our daughter the beautiful cultural gift to them, that heritage. So we are not looking for what to give the burden to them. When they have a beautiful, with full of words, language, I am not. trying to force her our language that is broken, obviously she's going to learn our language. But her first language is English, and I am very proud of that, that she is speaking this language where she can confide, she can tell every feelings very well.

So for our daughters, we are looking forward to give them those beautiful memories and let them know that we are proud Canadian Rohingyas and also let them enjoy their own life. What a beautiful gift. Yeah, thank you. And you, the two of you, I know you're in a better place here. You were talking about freedom and safety. Could you ever be completely unburdened of that history? Is that even possible? For us, that's what I was talking about, my daughters.

So for us, it's maybe not possible because we are so related. We are in touch with our family back there, and we know what's going on. and we sometimes does feel that we are our child, our, we are enjoying this life, and in the other world, our families are suffering. So there is something heavy in the heart. We pray and we try to work for them. Something we are trying to make change towards their life.

Maybe that's the compensation that we can make for them. Right now in Myanmar, the genocide is ongoing against the Rohingya people. So our first perpetrator is the Myanmar military. Now we are dealing with another perpetrator called Arcane Army. Arcane army is predominantly Buddhist and ethnically Rakhine and group. They're taking control of majority of the cities in Rakhine State, where we are from. and now in a short period of time, they have committed no less human rights violation than the Myanmar military against the Rohingya population. And they should be also prosecuted along with the Myanmar military.

As a Canadian citizen, I'm also grateful to the government of Canada because to the Rohingya crisis, they have done a lot better than other countries, other governments. Not long before our conversation, Mayu Ali became a Canadian citizen. It's the first time he's been a citizen of any country in the world. Following the exodus in 2017, the government of Canada recognized this Rohingya crisis as genocide. And then also the previous government appointed Bopri as a special envoy to mirror. And the government have already implemented some recommendations, but there are also some recommendation remain.

But I am very sad to know that the rule of a special envoy to Myanmar is no longer. And I am requesting the government of Canada, the current government of Canada, to reappoint a special envoy and to document the ongoing crime of the memory. military, also the recent human rights violation of the Arkhan Army, and refer these two perpetrators to international court of justice. Where the case is ongoing, as we're speaking about it. Yeah, where the case is ongoing against the Myanmar military. The International Court of Justice is expected to issue its ruling on that case in late

2026. Writing for you before was freedom. It was safe. sanctuary, it was safety. What is it for you now? It's a revolution and this revolution will continue, I hope, in the community. Writing is revolution. I love it. Thank you so much for answering my questions. It's really great to meet you and it's nice to meet another fellow Canadian. Thank you so much for your time and yeah, I hope more of my Canadian brothers and sister can know more about the Rohingya situation from my interview.

That was Rohingya poet, human rights activist, and now Canadian citizen Mayu Ali. We spoke at his home in Ottawa. This episode was produced by Pauline Holdsworth and Tariq Yuzbashi. Special thanks to Alex Neve for introducing us to Mayu. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso, technical production. Daniel Duval. Our senior producer is Nicola Lakshic. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of ideas, and I'm Nala Ayyed. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca.ca.com.