A new wave of Burmese find refuge in Indiana

Abdur Rahman describes seeing a child shot to death, then trampled by government soldiers. And that is not the worst thing he's seen.

In a small apartment in Southport, Rahman sits on a bed in the living room fashioned as a couch. He explains that he is in the United States alone, away from his mother, father and six siblings, whom he says are now all homeless in Myanmar.

Combing his fingers through his dark hair, sitting cross-legged on the bed, Rahman has impeccable manners and can barely crack a sullen smile.

A member of the Muslim Rohingya ethnic group of Myanmar, 19-year-old Rahman is part of the largest group of refugees entering the United States today. He is also one of an under-reported wave of refugees that the United Nations have called the most persecuted religious minority in the world.

Rahman, one of the very first Rohingya refugees in Indianapolis, softly says he did not seek to be brought to the United States, but it is where international aid groups placed him.

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His journey here is painted with tales of the horrors he witnessed back home in the Rakhine state in Myanmar, he calls "Arakan."

He recalls military personnel raping women and pillaging villages, villagers being shot, their bodies burned or thrown into the sea by soldiers.

Rahman left Myanmar more than a year ago when his parents forced him to out of their village. They had heard rumors about young people being abducted and never heard from again.

“They put a large group of young people on a boat to Thailand,” he says in Hindi through a translator. “The boat was so fast, it was very dark and we didn’t know where we were being taken.”

Who are the Rohingya?

The Rohingya are from the Rakhine state and have lived in the region for centuries, but they are considered a stateless ethnic group.

More than one million people have been stripped of their citizenship and denied freedom of movement in the Buddhist-majority country when government refused to recognize the 1.3 million Rohingya as citizens after the 1962 coup d’etat by General Ne Win.

Since 2012, when 140,000 Rohingya were forced into refugee camps, their situation has become  dire. In the words of the Simon-Skjodt Centre of America’s Holocaust Memorial Museum which campaigns to prevent genocide, the Rohingya are “at grave risk for additional mass atrocities and even genocide.”

With 11,902 arriving in the United States between Oct. 1, 2015, and Sept. 15, 2016, the group outpaced the number of 11,598 Syrian refugees who entered the states last year, according to the Refugee Processing Center, operated by the U.S. State Department.

And because Indiana is home to the largest Burmese population in the United States, an increasing number of Rohingya refugees are arriving in the Hoosier state.

It is an underreported atrocity which is beginning to affect Indianapolis' refugee population, said Cole Varga‎, executive director of Exodus Refugee Immigration in Indianapolis.

The largest group of Rohingya in the United States live in Fort Wayne, with more than 1,000 new residents, many of whom began to arrive in 2013.

In Indianapolis there are a handful of couples and families, but many migrate to Fort Wayne, to be closer to people who speak their language.

“It’s unfortunate that people don’t know more about this crisis,” says Stephanie Davis from Catholic Charities.

The challenges

The biggest challenge Rahman faces is the language barrier.

“The language Rohingya speaks is so rare that I was asked to be a translator in Salt Lake City,” said Lun Pieper, a Marion County deputy prosecutor. She does not speak the language.

Rahman says he feels a sense of isolation, but finds solace in his job at a car manufacturer in Mooresville.

Even living among his Burmese countrymen can be difficult, because the Burmese Chin refugees do not speak his language.

However, the Rohingya presence is increasingly creating new institutions in the Midwest.

The Associated Press reported that the first Burmese Muslim mosque constructed in the world in more than three decades was built in Fort Wayne in 2013.

And more than 2,000 Rohingya also live in Chicago, according to the Rohingya Culture Center in Chicago.

"The community is growing," says Abdul Jabbar, a Rohingya refugee who helps run the Culture Center.

With fresh footsteps in his new home, Rahman hopes that he may be able to return home some day.

“Things used to be normal,” Rahman said. "Back home things were normal, now everything has changed."

Call IndyStar reporter Fatima Hussein at (317) 444-6209. Follow her on Twitter: @fatimathefatima.