Rohingya risk death, rape at hands of smugglers to escape ‘open-air prison’ in Myanmar, Bangladesh

Reliance on smuggling networks puts Rohingya Muslims at risk of being trafficked and exploited as they try to leave abysmal living conditions
Those in Myanmar and Bangladesh usually try to go to Malaysia, with smugglers using Indonesia or Thailand as major transit countries

Rohingya Muslims

Sen Nguyen

Published: 8:30am, 28 Feb 2023

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Corrected [11:13pm, 6 Mar, 2023]

[11:13pm, 6 Mar, 2023]
This story was updated to correct Chris Lewa's gender pronoun in paragraph nine.

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Gura Amin, 20, says he can “never forget the most difficult time” in his life, when he drifted at sea for seven months with about 900 other Rohingya refugees on a boat run by smugglers, who had promised to take them to Malaysia only to arrive in Indonesia.

With their help, Amin was able to leave a refugee camp in Bangladesh, home to more than a million refugees like himself, where he lived for five years with little to no education or job prospects. But he could not accept what he experienced and witnessed on the boat in 2020.

“One hundred people died. There was no food, no water, nothing to survive [on],” he said, adding that anybody asking for food or water was beaten with a plastic pipe and that many women were raped. “When we arrived in Indonesia, the doctor checked and found that many women were pregnant.”

While he acknowledged the role smugglers played in helping him escape, the gratitude stopped there. “Of course I hate them. One day they will have to answer for these events to the Creator,” Amin said.

Rohingya people collect belongings from their boat after landing on Lampanah Leungah beach in Aceh Besar, Indonesia on February 16, 2023. Photo: AP

Smuggling networks enable Rohingya Muslims to leave abysmal living conditions in Myanmar and Bangladesh and seek opportunities in other countries, according to a December report by the Protecting Rohingya Refugees in Asia (PRRiA) project, an initiative funded by a European Union agency in 2021.

However, reliance on smugglers also puts Rohingya at risk of being trafficked and exploited.

Amin was among some 700,000 Rohingya to flee violence that broke out in Myanmar’s Rakhine state in 2017, in one of the largest displacements since the early 1990s, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHRC). In Buddhist-majority Myanmar, Rohingya Muslims face widespread discrimination, are refused citizenship and viewed as illegal South Asian immigrants.

Fates of Rohingya boats across Asia spotlight crisis of refugees ‘left to die’

Chris Lewa, director of Rohingya monitoring group The Arakan Project, said most Rohingya did not have paperwork and so could not travel without using a smuggler.

“I sometimes see the smugglers as service providers. They’re helping the Rohingya to get out of this horrible situation,” she said. “The main culprit of a lot of the problems and especially the deaths [of Rohingya] at sea is the countries that closed their borders, that pushed them back, and don’t even look for them if they are in distress, and so they have to use more dangerous ways.”

According to the UNHCR, from January 2020 to June 2021, more than 3,000 Rohingya attempted the journey across the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea, with two-thirds being women and children. Some 218 died or went missing at sea.

Rohingya refugees rest at a temporary shelter set up by the Aceh local government in Ladong, Indonesia. Photo: EPA-EFE

The PRRiA report said Rohingya in Myanmar and Bangladesh usually tried to go to Malaysia, and smugglers used Indonesia or Thailand as major transit countries.

Almost all the Rohingya respondents who went to Malaysia used smugglers for help with documents and transit across borders, with 44 per cent using more than one smuggler throughout their journey, according to a 2021 survey by Mixed Migration Centre, a Geneva-based research NGO.

Lewa of The Arkan Project said many Rohingya Muslims favoured Malaysia for the ability to reunite with family, the network of Rohingya communities as well as competitive salary levels, despite the increased risks of making the journey since Thailand stepped up border patrols following the discovery of a mass Rohingya grave in 2015.

02:38

Nearly 200 people arrive to Indonesia after drifting at sea for weeks

Rohingya activist Mohammed Rezuwan Khan in Cox’s Bazar, the site of many refugee camps, said not every Rohingya was willing to embark on the dangerous sea journeys even if their refugee camp felt like “an open-air prison”.

“There are many smugglers in the camp. I know some friends, and families who are being seduced by the traffickers,” Khan said, using the terms smugglers and traffickers interchangeably. He said some traffickers had threatened him for speaking up against them.

Even as Rohingya targeted Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia as potential host countries, the PRRiA report noted they had little guarantee of better treatment because of the nations’ strict immigration laws despite international law protections for refugees.

The three countries are not signatories of the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention, meaning they do not officially accept refugees for permanent resettlement.

Police officers take identity photographs for a Rohingya refugee at a temporary shelter in Ladong in Indonesia’s Aceh Province on February 17, 2023. Photo: AFP

Under Malaysia’s immigration regulations, smugglers and the smuggled can be penalised. Malaysian law does not distinguish between asylum seekers and illegal migrants without proper documentation, meaning they are at risk of arrest.

But according to Yuyun Wahyuningrum, chair and representative of Indonesia to the Asean Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, it would be “misleading” to think all 10 Asean countries close their doors to refugees because they had been hosting them for years.

“One reason why they don’t ratify the Convention is because they will be given more responsibilities,” said Yuyun, who spoke in a webinar organised by the US-based Refugees International group and Women’s Peace Network, an NGO focusing on peace building in Myanmar, this month.

She added the countries tended to avoid discussing the issue at a regional level.

As Malaysia battles Covid-19, its Rohingya refugees face a torrent of hate

Meanwhile for Amin, his life has slowly turned around.

After spending two years in Aceh, Indonesia, he had borrowed more money from relatives and paid another smuggler 7,000 ringgit (US$1,609) to go to Malaysia via boat, on top of the 10,000 ringgit he owed them for his Indonesian journey.

He now works in Kuala Lumpur at a logistics company. He has repaid all his debts and plans to return to Indonesia to study political democracy at the University of North Sumatra.

“I [have] been in limbo for the last eight years. I lost my innocence, my dream and my hopes for the future only because I am seeking safety from being bombed in Myanmar by the military,” he said. “And now I don’t want to lose precious time.”