After a Year, Rohingya Family Still Separated and Stranded

For Hasinah Izhar, it seems a lifetime since she scrambled onto a boat on a muddy shore of Myanmar, clutching three of her children, and joined the exodus of the persecuted Rohingya minority, hoping for a better life in Malaysia.

But in the year since she told her story to The New York Times, little has changed. The burdens of caring for three children and a jobless husband, while separated from the son she left behind in Myanmar, are still hard to bear.

“I’d like to fly like a bird back to Myanmar, but there is no peace and security there,” she said in the cramped rented room she shares with her husband and three children in Penang, Malaysia. “But we don’t want to stay in Malaysia, because we cannot work and live in freedom.” (Courtesy of nytimes.com)