HART Prize for Human Rights 2019| Burma.

This year we received a record number of entries from a diverse range of countries, resulting in our toughest competition yet! We were truly impressed by the quality, creativity, and passion for Human Rights demonstrated by our participants, and toughly enjoyed all the submissions we received.

Sana Mahmood won 3rd place in our HART Prize for Human Rights Senior Creative Competition 2019 with their entry titled:

Burma. – This piece of poetry that I have created is based upon the calamities that are taking place in Burma. Through my poem I wanted to focus on the ignorance of people, presenting Burma as another world to show the lack of connection and knowledge we have when a crisis like this happens. My poem uses the sense of hearing as the main tool of identifying the problem, I did this because it relates to the idea that we hear so much but we don’t process it and therefore I heightened this sense to allow the person to understand the damage that is taking place. I also added snippets of The Rohingya’s unfortunate reality, using ‘the wall’ as a separation of the two worlds, that are parallel but have nothing in common. I hope I have captured the struggle of these people as well as the ignorance of others.

—

Place a glass against the wall to the other world

if you’re silent enough

you can hear the muffled cries of children

move your ear closer

you can hear the hunger that strikes in their stomach

don’t move

stay still

can you hear that

the sounds of bodies being burnt

a mother sobbing as she is passed from man to man

soldiers laughing as a boy begs to see his father

I don’t know about you

but I can hear ethnic cleansing

and if you listen really closely

you can hear a genocide happening.