Nijam Uddin Mohammed recalls vividly his first day in Bradford: “Ninth of December 2008 – the most life-changing date of my life.” He remembers the eight-hour flight from Dubai to Manchester and the biting winter air when they landed. The hour-long coach journey up the M62, and his dad being confused about why people weren’t walking on the road, as they did in Bangladesh.

He also remembers being warmly welcomed by Bengalis, who brought curry to the £26-a-night Ibis hotel where they were staying. The 36-year-old was among the first group of Rohingya refugees to arrive in Bradford, the city more than 300 of the “world’s most persecuted minority” now call home – their biggest community in Europe.

“I have seen the world in Bradford,” says Mohammed, who arrived in West Yorkshire under the International Organization for Migration’s Gateway Protection programme, having lived in the sprawling Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh since he was 10 years old. “When I was in the refugee camp, when my people were in Burma, we never had the freedom of movement, no school facility, no health facility, no job facility. All these things we are getting in Bradford. In one word, it is fundamental rights, so I feel it’s my home.”



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nijam Uddin Mohammed, who arrived in Bradford in 2008. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

He learned English at Bradford College, then studied a year of social sciences before dropping out to become a teaching assistant in a primary school. He now works as an interpreter for the NHS, supplementing his income as a taxi driver in the evenings.

But every waking hour, he says, has been spent recently worrying about the horror unfolding in Myanmar, where in recent weeks more than 420,000 men, women and children have fled a military crackdown the UN has described as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.

Q&A Who are the Rohingya and what happened to them in Myanmar? Show Hide Described as the world’s most persecuted people, 1.1 million Rohingya people live in Myanmar. They live predominately in Rakhine state, where they have co-existed uneasily alongside Buddhists for decades. Rohingya people say they are descendants of Muslims, perhaps Persian and Arab traders, who came to Myanmar generations ago. Unlike the Buddhist community, they speak a language similar to the Bengali dialect of Chittagong in Bangladesh. The Rohingya are reviled by many in Myanmar as illegal immigrants and suffer from systematic discrimination. The Myanmar government treats them as stateless people, denying them citizenship. Stringent restrictions have been placed on Rohingya people’s freedom of movement, access to medical assistance, education and other basic services. Violence broke out in northern Rakhine state in August 2017, when militants attacked government forces. In response, security forces supported by Buddhist militia launched a “clearance operation” that ultimately killed at least 1,000 people and forced more than 600,000 to flee their homes. The UN’s top human rights official said the military’s response was "clearly disproportionate” to insurgent attacks and warned that Myanmar’s treatment of its Rohingya minority appears to be a "textbook example” of ethnic cleansing. When Aung San Suu Kyi rose to power there were high hopes that the Nobel peace prize winner would help heal Myanmar's entrenched ethnic divides. But she has been accused of standing by while violence is committed against the Rohingya. In 2019, judges at the international criminal court authorised a full-scale investigation into the allegations of mass persecution and crimes against humanity. On 10 December 2019, the international court of justice in The Hague opened a case alleging genocide brought by the Gambia. Rebecca Ratcliffe Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/AAP

His older sister, a mother of two, was forced to flee across the border to Bangladesh when the military raided her village, he says. His younger sister has lost her husband: “We don’t know if he’s alive or dead.” He gets daily updates from family members and friends but feels helpless about the crisis nearly 6,000 miles away.

“My people are running after food, running to save their lives, running for education – running for everything. How can I live in peace? I feel guilty. I cannot do anything for my people,” he says. “If this continues my people will disappear soon.”

He was one of 199 mainly Muslim Rohingya welcomed by Bradford council between 2008 and 2010, under its City of Sanctuary scheme. That number has risen by another hundred as families have grown and relatives outside the city gravitated towards the minarets of Bradford, where one in four of the population is Muslim. The Rohingya do not have a community centre nor a neighbourhood to call their own, and they appear in the city’s Telegraph & Argus newspaper only when holding peaceful rallies in the city’s main square.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hassan Khan, who helped resettle some of the first Rohingya Muslims who left Myanmar and stayed in Europe’s largest Rohingya community in Bradford. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

Councillor Hassan Khan, who helped them settle in nine years ago, says there were tensions initially between the Rohingya and other parts of the Muslim community but those have since disappeared. Hardly any of the newcomers could speak English, he recalls, and years in refugee camps had left some with tuberculosis and other illnesses.

A giant banner dominates the living room of Deen Mohammed Noori’s Victorian terrace home in Bradford’s Manningham area, with the message: “STOP GENOCIDE on Rohingya in Arakan, Burma!” The 32-year-old taxi driver, who arrived in Bradford in 2010, has been unable to work since the violence escalated at the end of August.

His aunt was killed this month when the Myanmar military stormed her village, he says, and other relatives have been missing for days. Life is on hold for him and his wife, and their living room has become the makeshift headquarters of the Arakan Rohingya Organisation UK, which has volunteers in Bangladesh’s overflowing refugee camps. “I’m helpless,” Noori says. “My village and others have been burned down. It’s hard for me here. I’m concerned about my whole nation, not only for my relatives.”

Noori and Mohammed believe the international community has been too slow to condemn Aung San Suu Kyi over her handling of the crisis. They want Britain – and Bradford – to use its influence abroad and offer sanctuary once again to those who have fled Myanmar during the latest crackdown.

Abdul Rahim Muhammad-Usmain, who came to Bradford in 2010, says he is immeasurably grateful to the West Yorkshire city for offering safe haven to the Rohingya, who he describes as “the other people, the homeless”. Nevertheless, he says he does not want to burden other countries with another influx of refugees. He dreams that one day they will be able to return to their homeland.

“We are still temporary. We need our home country. We need our own identity,” he says. “Even though we are living in Bradford, we don’t have our own identity. We need our own identity, we need our rights, our dignity.”