Why I wanted to be a journalist

Rohingya refugee Mohammed Zonaid explains

Mohammed Zonaid became a refugee in 2017. In this guest blog post, he explains why he had hopes of becoming a journalist


Our news is always covered by outsiders. I realised that when I lived in Burma. I felt that our issues were not always correctly portrayed. I started thinking that we as a community need to inform the world about our own realities. 

Language is another problem. We are not always able to communicate because of the language barrier.  People also feel uncomfortable. They don't say what they want to say. There is often a suspicion of the intention of various agencies and medias. We can't necessarily believe them. We say one thing. They report another.  We have seen in the camps that media come and go. They cover things superficially. They don't try to dig deep or do proper research. 

Burma had a long term plan to deny us education so that we are not able to become educated and fulfil our abilities and ambitions. They kept education away from us.  As a result, we could never express what we were going through to the outside world. 

Once we reached Bangladesh, the world showed us kindness in many ways. But what was really required was to give us capacity and power through formal education.  So in this respect the world has failed us. They have not been able to provide us with even basic formal education. 

Each and every one of us wishes to contribute to society. I want to be a journalist. We all have different talents. Some might want to be airline pilots. But we have no such opportunities. We want to be given a chance to build our community. 

Image by Mohammed Zonaid, March 2022.  
Translation by Shafiur Rahman.