Preserving Rohingya Culture: by Muhammad Noor@DWebThank you very much. To give you a context, of course, I did mention since yesterday, we are dealing with one of the most persecuted and vulnerable minorities and illiterate as well at the same time, which have been brainwashed and said that anything they have or exist, like documents or videos, these are all useless. And a lot of Rohingya who had a lot of these documents of historical documents and ID from 1960s, 70s. They're dished in Burma or it's been, you know, prone to flood or fire and so on. A lot of them are destroyed. Since 2012, we started this digitization process where we've been bringing awareness that these documents are extremely valuable because people thought that we are stateless. These documents are not valuable and people have been taught. And it is extremely, you know, tiring to tell people to preserve and go physically to houses to houses, give their consent and so on and so forth. Till 2016 and 2017 when accelerated genocide happened where number of people are killed and people have smart phones to record that. life burning of human beings and so many atrocities. And we started to tell people these are extremely valuable data that we need to collect. And then we don't have internet back in Burma. So we had to smuggle about 80,000, 90,000 phones into Burma from Bangladesh. And also SIM cards that has internet data. of them, more farther you go from the border, the less connection you have. So when all these data have been collected and many people died or killed and then the only way we could do is through Facebook or through any other and then Facebook deletes all those data and those activists, I'm one of them as well, taking my page down and our organization page down, all this because in the name of who violated the community rules and so on. So much of data has been lost and then we started to collect all this, archive it offline, which is also not a solution for many other people. This is where I started to look into decentralization of this data. What can we do? How can we do? So decentralizing, when we started in 2016 and 17 not using directly, there's not enough mature technology, so we put it in a way, we put some in Google Drive, we put some in Dropbox, we put some here, keeps a copy, somebody another keeps a copy, so we track record of this. And then we started to build this archive called RGA, Rohingya Genocide Archive, where we put in different places and we have different catalog. We put metadata in one place and we put the data in another place. That's how we've been. And it's been so instrumental when Gambia has filed a case in ICJ against Myanmar. So we became very instrumental to provide over 600 videos that are so graphic that compare to genocide. our website has been down, it's been attacked on multiple fronts and so on. that's what I believe that decentralization would help in many ways of restoring this in a more sustainable way, which we're still searching for. One aspect of course, the other aspect, is the cultural documentation and cultural data of Rohingya, which is a huge archive itself. The history, the tradition, the culture, the song, the food, and the map. And one of the sad things is that Arakand, the land Arakand, most of the villages has a Rohingya name. Today, if you can Google, if you look at the Google map, most of the Rohingya names have been removed from there by the Burmese. military or I don't know how but it's totally gone. So we are trying to reconstruct that map also with the Rohingya name and village name ripping off all those. So yes, since Filecoin and Internet Archive we've been working for last six, seven months to put all number of data that include Rohingya, all the open data as well which is the language, the cultural aspect of it. But the genocide, we are still considering what could we put, what cannot put, what is sensitive, what is not. But of course, we figured out that maybe catalog would be a good point to display not the actual data, the catalog, how many atrocities, rape been committed, villages had been burned and killed and so on and so forth. So yes, still we are in learning process in many ways. But one thing that I want to say is that Technology will evolve time to time, but I'm not here, I'm not going to wait until technology perfects, I'm still going to scrape everything that we have, whether centralized or decentralized, it and then we'll find a solution along that line.
𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: “𝘠𝘦𝘢𝘩, 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵'𝘴 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵. 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸, 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦, 𝘐 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥𝘯'𝘵 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘧𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘦𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘯𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘵𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧. 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘶𝘹𝘶𝘳𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘸𝘢𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵. 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘐'𝘥 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘯 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘦'𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘩𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯?”
__which is creating a decentralized virtual heritage place like Arakan, where all the centralized institute are removing names, our ancestral land names and all other things to create and put all the data that we have and other have in their repositories and create this multi-layer virtual Arakan which the only way we could connect maybe in the future because since most of them are driven out of the land which is where atrocities happen, all these cultures, what type of things they used to have, what are the languages so more sustainable and I believe through decentralization and more sustainable way this could be achieved and we are on that path and I'm happy to you know to take any feedback or any support on building that.
𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: “𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘬𝘴 𝘔𝘰𝘩𝘢𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘥. 𝘚𝘰 𝘢𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘣𝘢𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘳𝘦𝘥-𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘳 𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘸𝘦 𝘦𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘧𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴 𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘦𝘯 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘭𝘦𝘧𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘘 &𝘈 , 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘻𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘯𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘷𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦. 𝘚𝘰, 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘥𝘰 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘲𝘶𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵?”
__ So I think we don't have the time to go into all the archives. So we have separated different archives. One of them is called RGA, Rohingya Genocide Archive, that is totally private. Only metadata available on a basic data on the request of accountability such as like ICC and ICJ. We release those and sensitive information, any information that linked directly to any human being existing. So we have a number of protocol that we are working on with multiple international agencies. one of them is witnessed as well. Of course in terms of historical and other data that what we try to collect was cultural language and heritage and all this. So that what we are looking into making it public at the same time. But not necessarily if you put in a decentralization that you cannot hide. So there is way you can put in a private wallet which we have tried on multiple blockchain. on a specific data, but the data can be pulled out. Of course there are difficulties to do that. As I told, that we don't have the luxury to get all these things in line, but we are working on it as much as. So there's a lot of things based on policies, what to give access, what not to give access, so that we don't do harms, so that that person is not double victimized, and so on and so forth.
“Thank you, Mohammed Noor. I think you might have done a better job of keeping us on time than I have. So I appreciate that.