On the Run From Oppression in BurmaLong persecuted in their
native land, the stateless Rohingya have sought sanctuary across
the globe. Update, Monday, November 19, 2012: Today, President
Obama became the first sitting US president to visit Burma,
where he met with President Thein Sein as well as Nobel laureate
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Before the visit, President Thein Sein
condemned recent violence against the Rohingya and pledged to
consider extending new rights to the stateless minority. Human
rights groups have criticized the President's visit as
premature, citing the regime's remaining political prisoners as
well as ongoing violence against ethnic minorities in the
country. Saiful Huq Omi, a photographer based in Dhaka,
Bangladesh, first focused on Burma's Rohingya refugees in 2009,
when he began documenting their lives in Bangladesh, Malaysia,
and the United Kingdom. The Rohingya—an ethnic, religious, and
linguistic minority from Burma's northern Rakhine State—have
been persecuted for decades; nearly a mil