Carlos Sardiña Galache is based in South East Asia, and has written extensively about political transition in Myanmar and its conflicts. In March this year, Verso published his "The Burmese Labyrinth: A History of the Rohingya Tragedy."
We invited Carlos to submit some of his own images in support of the competition and to help build awareness. These do not form part of the competition.
"I took this picture in November 2012 in the concentration camps (no other way to call them) around Sittwe, the capital of Arakan State, where tens of thousands of Rohingyas have been confined since July that year. Many people there already suspected early on that they would be condemned to live in that place for the long haul, and they were not wrong. The Burmese government has never had any intention to let them go back to their homes."
I took this picture in early 2016, during my first trip to Northern Arakan. This is a small madrassa in Myo Thu Gyi Village, near Maungdaw town. Myo Thu Gyi was the first village attacked during the first wave of brutal "clearance operations" by the Burmese military later that year, and it was completely obliterated during the second, and eve more bloody, military onslaught in 2017. I don't know where these kids are now, possibly in the camps around Cox's Bazar, but this picture shows a portion of a world that just doesn't exist anymore.
"I took this picture in October 2017. It shows Rohingya refugees exhausted after arriving to Shapuree Island, in the Naf River near Teknaf (Bangladesh), after fleeing ethnic cleansing in Burma. The girl was exhausted and had difficulty in breathing."
"I took this picture in the camps in Cox's Bazar in October 2017 too. You can see the immensity of the camps, but also the grace and dignity of this Rohingya girl, and many others, in the middle of so much misery."