The love story between between Setara and Mohammad is extraordinarily rare in Myanmar — she is a Buddhist and he’s from the minority Muslim Rohingya community.
The Buddhists despise the Rohingya in their country, and the United Nations has called the Rohingya one of the most persecuted people in the world.
Their marriage is also risky in a nation where security forces have driven more than 730,000 Rohingya into exile since 2016, carried out large-scale massacres and burned hundreds of villages in a campaign the U.N. and human rights groups have described as “ethnic cleansing.”
Mohammad characterizes their relationship in much the same way his wife does. He says: “She sees me as a human being and I see her as a human being, and it’s that simple.”
