Cate Blanchett was unprepared for the horrors and devastation she witnessed while visiting a Bangladesh refugee camp for Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar.
The Oscar-winning actress spoke of her experiences at the U.N. Security Council in New York on Tuesday, describing “the extent and depth of suffering” she witnessed. The U.N. goodwill ambassador heard “gut-wrenching” accounts of rape, torture, people seeing their loved ones killed in front of them, and women who watched their children thrown into fires and burned.
“I am a mother, and I saw my children in the eyes of every single refugee child I met,” she told the Council. “I saw myself in every parent. How can any mother endure seeing her child thrown into a fire?”
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The Rohingya Muslims have been treated as outsiders in Buddhist Myanmar and have fled a violent military-led crackdown in their country. Since 1982, they have been denied citizenship, freedom of movement, and basic human rights. Blanchett met with a refugee, Gul, who first fled the country in 1978, and again in 1992. Now at age 90, the actress says the woman is once again a refugee living in poverty “with the sole wish that her great-grandchildren will have a better future.”
“The need for this future to transpire inside Myanmar has never been more urgent,” Blanchett said. “If we fail to act now, Gul’s grandchildren, like thousands of others, will be unable to escape this relentless cycle that generations of Rohingya have experienced.”
Refugees raped by Myanmar security forces are giving birth in refugee camps to children who not only are stateless but “are likely to carry this stigma for the rest of their lives.” The Australian actress asked the Security Council to help the Rohingya return with “a clear pathway to full citizenship.”
“We have failed the Rohingya before,” Blanchett pleaded. “Please, let us not fail them again.”
She added, “Their experiences will never leave me.”