Journalists and filmmakers Am and Steve Sandford have covered Southeast Asia as a couple for the last 30 years and have been intimately involved with the Rohingya in Myanmar since 2009, when members of the Muslim minority group began fleeing their homes.

That culminated in a mass exodus amid an alleged genocide of the Rohingya in 2017, when more than 700,000 fled into Bangladesh. The Rohingya’s plight has gone from bad to worse amid the civil war in Myanmar following the coup d’etat in early 2021.

The Sandfords have released a book – “Witness to Genocide, Chasing the Rohingya in Southeast Asia” – that details their experiences in gathering evidence. The well-written chronicle leaves readers with no doubt about the tragedies inflicted against a largely impoverished ethnic minority.

Am, a native Thai, and Steve, a photojournalist from Canada, spoke with Luke Hunt from The Diplomat about their eight-year odyssey, which began when a boat overloaded with Rohingya refugees washed ashore in southern Thailand in 2009.

Click here to listen.