The Rohingya people of Myanmar have been persecuted for decades. The worst period of violence flared up in August 2017, when almost 700,000 Rohingya were forced to leave Myanmar after a large-scale military operation. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was in power at the time. Today very few members of this Muslim minority remain in the country. Instead they live mostly in Bangladesh’s refugee camps, or, precariously, in Malaysia, India, Thailand, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

What does it mean for an entire people to be living in exile? Journalist Kaamil Ahmed has spent years trying to answer that question and has conducted hundreds of hours of interviews in order to understand Rohingya suffering and what he argues is the complicity of NGOs and the UN. In February 2023 he came to Intelligence Squared to discuss the themes of his new book I Feel No Peace: Rohingya Fleeing Over Seas and Rivers and to reveal the extraordinary resilience that has helped these scattered communities survive. 

Praise for I Feel No Peace: Rohingya Fleeing Over Seas and Rivers

‘This book goes to the heart of the eternal and under-reported suffering of the Rohingya. Forced out of what once was Burma and now is Myanmar, most are in exile in Bangladesh and beyond. An important story of our times.’ — Jon Snow

‘This book paints a deep, complicated and appalling picture: of one million people who have fled danger but now face immense risks from those they thought would protect them. While documenting the harm done by the UN and the Bangladeshi state, Ahmed humanises those normally dehumanised — the refugees.’ — Aditya Chakrabortty 

‘A haunting and poetic, yet incisive and grounded, account of the tragedies that have befallen the Rohingya, of the realities of a people living almost entirely in exile, and of their struggles to maintain dignity and hope in the face of persecution and betrayal.’ — Kenan Malik, author, broadcaster and Observer columnist