Distributed records in the Rohingya refugee diaspora: Arweave and the R-Archive
| Date | 08 November 2022 |
| Pages | 813-829 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-08-2022-0174 |
| Published date | 08 November 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
| Author | Saqib Sheikh,Anne J. Gilliland,Philipp Kothe,James Lowry |
Distributed records in the
Rohingya refugee diaspora:
Arweave and the R-Archive
Saqib Sheikh
S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore, Singapore
Anne J. Gilliland
Department of Information Studies, University of California,
Los Angeles, California, USA
Philipp Kothe
postmint.xyz, Singapore, Singapore, and
James Lowry
Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, City University of New York,
New York, New York, USA
Abstract
Purpose –This article delineates the pilot implementation of the Rohingya Archive (R-Archive). The R-
Archive seeks to both confront and exploit the roles of documentation and recordkeeping in forced
displacement of Rohingya people through targeted physical and bureaucratic violence in Myanmar. This
grassroots activist intervention is located at the intersection of technology, rights, records, jurisdictions and
economics. Using Arweave’s blockweave, the R-Archive secures copies of records, such as identity
documentation, land deeds and personal papers, carried into diaspora by Rohingya refugees against
unauthorised alteration, deletion and loss, providing a trust infrastructure for accumulating available evidence
in support of rights claims and cultural preservation.
Design/methodology/approach–Iterative developmentof functional requirements,data collectionprocesses
and identification of a technological solution for the community-based, post-custodial, blockchain-inspired R-
Archive; designand testing of the R-Archive pilot;and analysis of trust and economicconcerns arising.
Findings –A complex set of interconnecting considerations is raised by this use of emerging technologies in
service to a vulnerable and diasporic community. Hostile governments and volatile cryptocurrencies are both
threats to the distributed post-custodial R-Archive. However, the strength of the community bonds that form
the archive and articulated in its records speak to the possibility of perdurance for a global Rohingya archive,
and working through the challenges surfaced by its development offers the possibility to serve as a model that
might be adaptable for other grassroots archival activist projects initiated by oppressed, marginalised and
diasporic communities.
Researchlimitations/implications –Personal and communitysafety andaccessibility concerns,especially
in refugee camps and under Covid-19 restrictions, presented particular challenges to carrying out the research
and development that are addressed in the research design and future research plans.
Practical implications –The goal of this pilot was to collect and store examples of a range of documents that
demonstrate different aspects of Rohingyaculture and links to the homeland as well as those that record formal
evidentiary relationships between members of the Rohingya community now in diaspora and the Burmese
state (e.g. acknowledgements of citizenship). The pilot was intended to demonstrate the viability of using a
blockchain-inspired decentralised archival system combined with a community-driven approach to data
collection and then to evaluate the results for potential to scale.
Social implications –The R-Archive is a community-centred and driven effort to identify and preserve,
under as secure and trusted conditions as possible, digital copies ofdocuments that are of juridical, cultural and
personal value to the Rohingya people and also of significance as primary documentary evidence that might be
The Arweave-
based
Rohingya
Archive
813
Funding: This research was supported by the Roddenberry Foundation Catalyst Fund Prize.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 7 August 2022
Revised 1 October 2022
Accepted 10 October 2022
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 79 No. 4, 2023
pp. 813-829
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-08-2022-0174
used by international legal institutions in investigating genocide taking place in Burma and by academic
researchers studying the history of Burma.
Originality/value –The R-Archive is novel in terms of its technological application (Arweave), the economic
concerns of a vulnerable stateless population it is trying to address, and its functional complexity, in that its
goal is simultaneously to serve both legal evidentiary and community archive functions. The R-Archive is also
an important addition to other notable efforts in the diasporic Rohingya community that have attempted to
employ the tools of technology for cultural preservation.
Keywords Refugees, Blockchain, Arweave, Blockweave, Post-custodial archive, Rights in records, Rohingya
people, Statelessness
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
This article discusses the motivation for and development of the pilot phase of the
blockweave-based Rohingya Archive (the R-Archive). The R-Archive is a post-custodial
digital archive, which means that it does not have a physical counterpart, and only digital
copies of physical records are maintained within it (Caswell, 2020, p. 26;Shein and Lapworth,
2016). The article first provides some background regarding the Rohingya people and the
historical and current abuses and bureaucratic violence that they have experienced in
Arakan (now called Rakhine State) in Burma (called Myanmar by its current government) in
southeast Asia. Detailing the impetus behind the R-Archive’s creation, the article then
outlines the blockweave technologies on which it is built and how they work to reduce the
environmental impact of inten sive computation that is characteristic of blockchain
applications. It also discusses the design and implementation of the R-Archive pilot and
the archival and trust challenges that surfaced in the process. It considers the socio-technical
and juridical issues that arise at this archival intervention at the intersection of rights,
records, technologies, jurisdictions, economics and politics and concludes with a reflection on
the entire endeavour, its next steps and its potential to serve as a model for similar grassroots
archival activism by oppressed, marginalised and diasporic communities.
The systematic oppression of the Rohingya people in Burma through
bureaucratic violence and cultural destruction
The Rohingya people are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group that has historically resided in Rakhine
or Arakan as it is locally known. A predominantly Muslim population with a largely clan-
based social structure, the Rohingya have faced a long history of state persecution that, it has
been argued in recent years, meets the criteria for genocide (UN, 2018). Although the early
leaders of independent Burma frequently used the term “Rohingya”in official records and
procedures to signal the inclusion of the Rohingya in the Burmese nation, the current
government refuses this categorisation and instead classifies the Rohingya people as
“Bengalis”and has forced them to be recorded as such, for example, in the 2014 national
census. Such “weaponization”(Carbone et al., 2020) by the state of the census and other forms
of official records against the Rohingya people is part of a longer history of using what
anthropologists term “bureaucratic violence”(Eldridge and Reinke, 2018;Graeber, 2015;
Gupta, 2012) as a key mechanism for denying the historical citizenship of Rohingya people in
Burma and suppressing their identity as a community.
Rakhine existed as an independent kingdom for centuries until 1784 when it was
conquered by the Burmese Konbaung Dynasty. In 1823, it came under British colonial
occupation. Following the independence of Burma in 1948, tensions between nationalistic
elements within the Burmese government and society and the Rohingya people became
evident although the Rohingya still enjoyed full citizenship status and a level of civic
participation. Beginning in the 1970s, a series of military operations by the Tatmadaw regime
JD
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