As a child in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, Faruk Arian remembers watching members of his Rohingya community being stripped of any power they once had, trapped in a vortex of poverty, ethnic hatred and violence.
He was shot as a teenager by soldiers from the Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s military. Years later, when the Rohingya faced another wave of brutal persecution, he fled by boat to Malaysia, eventually finding safety in Kuala Lumpur.
“People could take anything from us because we weren’t strong,” he told This Week in Asia.
Now, at 30 years old, Faruk is rewriting that narrative – literally building strength to challenge perceptions of his people.
He trains relentlessly at a gym in Bandar Utama, a middle-class neighbourhood, sculpting his body in pursuit of an ambitious dream: becoming the first Rohingya bodybuilder to compete on the sport’s grandest stage, Mr Olympia.
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