Using Football to Spread the Word About the Plight of the Rohingya

Robi Alam is a Rohingya refugee. His family fled violence and persecution in Myanmar. A decade later, Robi was born in a refugee camp in Bangladesh. Life was hard in the camps, and Robi and his friends would wrap rubber bands around a wad of plastic bags and play football until the ball fell apart. When Robi was 10, his family emigrated to Australia, where most people have never even heard of the plight of the Rohingya. To help ease their transition, Robi and some of his fellow Rohingya started playing football again, informally at first, in nearby parks. But their passion grew, and they formed an official club. They call themselves Rohingya United, and their goal is to raise awareness of the Rohingya issue. Now there are Rohingya football teams scattered across Australia, as well as in Canada, the US, and other countries.

You can listen to Using Football to Spread the Word About the Plight of the Rohingya online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Using Football to Spread the Word About the Plight of the Rohingya is an episode from The Long Game: Sports Stories of Courage and Conviction by Foreign Policy and Doha Debates.

This episode is 29:14 long.

This episode was published on Oct 20, 2022.

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