MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The military government of Myanmar is paving the way for an election later this year. The ruling junta took power by coup in 2021. Last week, it lifted its yearslong state of emergency.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The vote is expected to be fraught. One lingering issue is the status of Rohingya Muslims. Members of the minority group have long been denied citizenship in Myanmar, and authorities have persecuted them for decades.
MARTIN: Many fled. Today, over 1 million Rohingya refugees are languishing in squalid camps in neighboring Bangladesh. Nurul Hoque was born in one of those camps in 1992. NPR's Ashley Westerman and her colleague, Michael Sullivan, met him in 2017 in Bangladesh.
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NURUL HOQUE: I have a country. But my country denied me as I'm Rohingya.
FADEL: Since then, his life has changed dramatically. Last month, Ashley met him again.
ASHLEY WESTERMAN, BYLINE: ...But not in Bangladesh.
Hi. How are you?
HOQUE: Yeah. Good to see you.
WESTERMAN: Oh, my goodness.
Instead, at his home in southeast Portland, Oregon.
HOQUE: Yes. Come on.
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WESTERMAN: Nurul Hoque beams proudly as he shows me around the simple two-bedroom ground-floor apartment. He lives here with his wife, Taslima (ph), and two children, Jawad and Jasmine (ph).
HOQUE: (Non-English language spoken).
WESTERMAN: Now 33, his wide smile sits on a rounder face. His eyes are still kind and his hair a bit more gray.
HOQUE: Sis, please have a seat.
WESTERMAN: Over noodles and watermelon, Nurul Hoque explains that they arrived in the U.S. in 2023 and chose to live in Portland because his wife already had a cousin here.
So how did you get here?
HOQUE: Well, that is a big question (laughter).
WESTERMAN: His journey to America begins in 2016, when Nurul Hoque helped found a civil society group that advocates for rooting out things like drugs, child marriage and human trafficking from Rohingya camps in Bangladesh, where he grew up. This work made him a target of the several gangs and militant groups that make their money off these kinds of illicit activities. Over the years, Nurul Hoque says he faced multiple threats. Then, in December 2020...
HOQUE: I received a threat to be killed as I was kidnapped.
WESTERMAN: You were kidnapped?
HOQUE: Yes. I was kidnapped to be killed by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army people because of...
WESTERMAN: The powerful Rohingya militant group accused Nurul Hoque of co-authoring a report that criticized them.
HOQUE: They take me in a tea shop, and then they investigated me. You write this report? I said, never write this report.
WESTERMAN: Nurul Hoque argued that the report in question did not even include his name. He was finally released but with a warning - publish anything bad about us, and we will kill you.
HOQUE: So then I never feel safe. And then I complain to the UNHCR.
WESTERMAN: That's the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. An investigation found the threats were valid, and the U.N. agency eventually helped facilitate his move to the U.S., making him one of the more than 12,000 Rohingya refugees settled here.
Today, Nurul Hoque works with the state to help Oregonians and new arrivals to the U.S. like himself access government services. He says it's the least he can do to give back.
HOQUE: That was one of my ways and my promise after I come in USA. I can help some of them through my service.
WESTERMAN: A home with walls. A job that pays. His son goes to school. Food on the table.
This looks amazing.
HOQUE: That fish, coral fish.
WESTERMAN: Yeah.
HOQUE: And a chicken leg piece.
WESTERMAN: It's a far cry from the crowded, dusty, tent-filled refugee camp where we first met eight years ago. Still, Nurul Hoque says he's often worried about his people. More than a million Rohingya remain in southern Bangladesh, including his parents, with more arriving every day. And in recent months, he also began to worry about his community here in the U.S., as the Trump administration suspends settlement for most refugees.
HOQUE: Many refugees like me.
WESTERMAN: Nurul Hoque knows his new life in America could be taken away at any time. So he'll work every day, he says, to prove he deserves it.
Ashley Westerman, NPR News, Portland, Oregon.
FADEL: NPR asked the Department of Homeland Security to comment on any plans they may have for Rohingya refugees in the U.S. We have not heard back. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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