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Beckoning of fortune traps Rohingyas

Refugees from Myanmar get on boats; go for horrific sea journey to seek better life abroad

PORIMOL PALMA, back from Cox's Bazar
Driven by abject poverty, Rohingyas living in Cox's Bazar camps and adjacent areas undertake perilous sea journeys in search of better lives in MalaysiaviaThailand.
Although the practice has been going on for nearly five years, the issue came into the spotlight when Indian and Indonesian coastguards rescued several hundred Rohingyas and some Bangladeshis a few weeks ago. Many others were feared dead in the Indian Ocean.
Denied citizenship and persecuted in Myanmar, an estimated 2 lakh Rohingyas infiltrated the Bangladesh border since the early 1990s, only around 23,000 of whom living in two camps in Cox's Bazar are registered as refugees, while the rest are deemed illegal. And the influx is still continuing.
The Rohingyas are a Muslim ethnic group of the Northern Rakhine State of Western Myanmar, whose population is mostly concentrated in two northern townships of the state formerly known as Arakan.
In Myanmar they are forbidden to get married or to travel without the state's permission, and have no legal right to own land
or property, although the population has been living there for hundreds of years.
As they are physically, linguistically and culturally similar to South Asians, especially the Banglees, and since Bangladesh shares a bof^r with Myanmar, hundreds of them cross into Bangladesh every year, living illegally in Cox's Bazar area.
In further search of fortune many of them embark on journeys through the sea towards Malaysia, often ending up dead without reaching the destination, while the luckier ones get rescued or end up in sweatshops ofMalaysia.
On December 28 last year the Indian coast guard rescued 105 illegal migrants from the high seas off the coast of Andaman.
Following the rescue the Indian authorities sent a list of 67 names of the rescued people to the Bangladesh government saying they were claiming to be Bangladeshis.
Cox's Bazar police checked the identities of the 67 and found that only 36 of them are Bangladeshis.
The rest are most probably Rohingyas who were living in Bangladesh illegally, said Matiur Rahman Sheikh, police superintendent of Cox's Bazar.
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The human traffickers who arrange such deadly journeys are also mostly Rohingyas said officials of Bangladesh Rifles and of the Cox's Bazar administration.
Life is not much better for them in Bangladesh either, as the country is one of the poorest in the world, which cannot afford to extend a welcoming hand to such a large number of desperately needy uninvited guests.
The fallout gives rise to obvious strife between the illegal immigrants and the unwelcoming host population.
"They are very vulnerable. And that's why they are the main target of the human traffickers,” said Helal Mohammad Khan, a BDR official in Teknaf.
"Around 95 percent of those who risk their lives in the sea to go to Malaysia are Rohingyas," said Mohammad Jasim Uddin, officer in charge of Teknaf police station, adding, "The sea route for illegal migration is actually their discovery. "
The Thai authorities alone picked up some 4,886 Rohingyas from the Indian Sea between 2007 and 2008, according to a media report.
Besides, there are around 600 Rohingyas languishing in Indian jails, said a police official in Cox's Bazar.
"There is a huge syndicate of human traffickers based in Myanmar, Bangladesh and Malaysia," another BDR official said.
The syndicate chooses winter as the best time for arranging such desperate journeys because the sea remains relatively calm during the season, the official noted.
Enayetullah, one of the 105 rescued by the Indian coastguard on December 28, told his brother-in-law Hafez Ahmed over the phone that they arrived at the Thai coast in a week after starting from Cox's Bazar, but the Thai coast guard refused to accept them and pushed them back into the deep sea instead, on an engineless boat.
"Tliey were over 500 Rohingyas and some Bangladeshis," Hafez told The Daily Star quoting Enayetullah.
"Enayet said they had some dry rice cereal and molasses initially on the boat, but soon they ran out of that ration and were starving for days when the boat started to drift into deeper sea," Hafez added.
Investigators said human traffickers can easily attract the unemployed poor Rohingyas because the traf-
ficking fee they charge is not very high, and since no document is required for the journey, only desperation do suffice.
"The fee ranges between 20,000 to 25,000 taka," said a police officer in Cox’s Bazar.
Once the money is collected, the willing are picked up in groups of 20 or 30 by fishing boats from different coastal points of Cox's Bazar, Teknaf, and Myanmar, and are ferried to the deep sea to waiting trawlers or other engine boats holding promises of the journey to Malaysia, said a BDR official.
Moheshkhali, Kutubdia Fisheries Ghat, Shah Parir Dweep of Cox's Bazar and the coastal zones of Myanmar's Rakhaine state are the usual gathering points of the desperate migrating Rohingyas, he said.
The route runs through the Bay of Bengal to Thailand and from there to Malaysia over land, he said adding that there were many incidents when boats drowned or boat engines malfunctioned in the sea, eventually getting many of the passengers killed, while many also got arrested by the Indian or Thai coast guards.
There were even cases of defrauding the desperate migrants when swindlers promised them jobs in Malaysia, but ended up leaving them marooned on islands near Cox's Bazar after a journey of a day or two by trawlers, said a journalist in Teknaf.
Those who manage to reach Malaysia also do seldom get a mentionable better life.
"These people are often sold to fish traders in the Chinese Sea, on top of that the traffickers extort a portion of their earnings," said Harun Al Rashid, a Bangladeshi working with an immigrants' rights group in Malaysia.
BDR official Helal Mohammad Khan said, "The traffickers also extort the migrants when they reach Thailand or Malaysia, through their family ties in Myanmar and Bangladesh. "
A Bangladeshi who went to Malaysia with a group of Rohingyas through the sea route ten years ago, said he still has to work illegally there, with threats of arrest always hanging over him.
"Most of the time we can’t go to our dormitories to sleep in fear of getting arrested. We have to sleep on the hills." the worker told The Daily Star over the phone from Malaysia requesting anonymity.