300 L. Kingston, A. Seibert Hanson of texts. Since the Rohingya language has primarily been a spoken one, its speakers have typically used Burman or Arabic scripts when they needed to write things down. In the early 1980s, in response to practical needs as well as pressure to assert the Rohingya as a distinct community, Rohingya diasporic scholar Molvi Hanif developed an alphabet for the language. The new script, called Hanifi Rohingya,10 was first used in print newspapers within Rakhine state and gained users among the diaspora in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, and Malaysia. The Myanmar government, however, banned the teaching and use of the script. Muhammad Noor (Hanifi’s grandson) gathered materials from the diasporic Rohingya community to illustrate the “bona fides” of the script; he estimated there were 300,000 students who had learned the Rohingya language at refugee camps and overseas schools, for instance, and the Hanifi script was used in a variety of teaching materials. Five years of data collection and several proposal drafts later, the case was made that Rohingya is a “living language” and that the Hanifi script is widely read enough to meet Unicode’s requirements. The Consortium accepted the application and the Hanifi Rohingya script is expected to be released soon in the new version of Unicode (Abraham and Jaehn 2019, pp. 8).11 “From language comes political identity,” argue Itty Abraham and Miram Jaehn (2019). “The acceptance of the modern Hanifi Rohingya script by Unicode adds an enormously powerful new ally to the claim that there exist distinct and unique Rohingya people, in direct rebuttal of the claims of the Myanmar government” (pp. 9). Another advocacy approach is to encourage Rohingya artists and share their work with the global community. For instance, I Am a Rohingya: Poetry from the Camps and Beyond is a book of poetry that resulted from 2019 writing workshops in Cox’s Bazaar organized by James Byrne and Shehzar Doja. Published in English, the book features Rohingya poets who have written in English, as well as had their work translated from Burmese and Rohingya. In the book’s introduction, Doja (2019) reflects on his experiences visiting refugee camps since September 2017. He explains that NGOs and governmental bodies focused on healthcare and emergency relief, “but something vital was missing”: “Where were the archives of written literature, poetry and songs?” he asked. “The simple truth is that the ethnic Rohingya population, which has existed for several centuries, was being systemically purged of its identity including, essentially, its culture, in a manner reminiscent of great ethnic purges of the past” (Doja 2019, pp. 19). In the poem “Birth,” Rohingya poet Yasmin Ullah (2019) writes: “We self-identify as ‘Rohingya’ / so we won’t lose the last glimpse of / history and its triumphs. / How great we once were. / How we have been trampled into / extermination – “ (pp. 50). Furthermore, Rohingya poet 10 The Hanifi Rohingya script does not resemble Burmese or Bengali, but rather “bears a strong affinity” with Arabic. “Rohingya would certainly not want to be associated with Burman, and are accused by the Myanmar government of being illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, a charge they firmly reject. Choosing either the Burman or Bengali script under these circumstances had high costs.” However, literate Rohingya learn Arabic as a second language or read the Holy Qur’an in that script, making the use of an Arabic template a more appropriate option. See: Abraham and Jaehn 2019, pp. 8. 11 Google also created an online keyboard for the Rohingya language, which is available at: https://​langu​ ageto​ols-​153419.​appsp​ot.​com/​rhg/. 13