KOLKATA and
BANGKOK - Dubious agents are making huge profits
from smuggling Rohingya Muslims through the
organization of risky boat voyages from Bangladesh
to destinations in Southeast Asia. The underground
racket has accentuated the plight of one of Asia's
most persecuted and desperate minority groups.
An Asia Times Online investigation based
on interviews with recent migrants has found that
each Rohingya who takes to sea in one of these
often leaky and antiquated vessels piloted by
unprofessional seamen is required to pay between
30,000 to 35,000 Bangladesh taka (US$480) for the
perilous journey. This is
a huge sum for the
impoverished Rohingya.
There is no
guarantee that when they arrive in Southeast Asia,
usually in either Indonesia, Malaysia or Thailand,
that they will not be arrested or forced back out
to sea without adequate provisions. For those that
successfully slip past border police, they are
often herded onto remote rubber plantations
situated along the Malaysian-Thai border.
There, the Rohingya are frequently
pressured to call on their families back in
Bangladesh to send more money or face bodily harm.
These rubber plantations are usually either run or
hired by the agents, who are often religious
leaders themselves from the Rohingya community.
Many have settled into Malaysia or Thailand where
they themselves illegally migrated.
Only
after the smuggled Rohingya are able to muster
more funds - usually between 5,000 to 10,000 taka
- and transfer them to the agent's personal bank
account are they taken to certain safe house
mosques in Malaysia. From there, they are left to
fend for themselves.
"These plantations
are actually torture chambers," claims a
researcher based in Bangladesh who has closely
tracked the human smuggling route. 'Musclemen
hired by the agents beat, torture and threaten the
Rohingyas to shell out more money," he said.
The researcher spoke on condition of
anonymity because he lives in the same
neighborhood as one of the trade's biggest agents,
who he referred to only as "Rahim", and fears
reprisals for revealing the agents' methods and
abuses.
He claims Rahim owns a rubber
plantation in Sungai Kolok, on the Thai side of
the border in the insurgency-plagued province of
Narathiwat, which is a key passage point in the
smuggling route. Rohingya have in certain
instances been rounded up as part of military
sweeps against armed insurgents operating in the
areas.
But Rahim and his smuggling
associates continue to operate freely in area,
according to some Rohingya who now live and work
in Malaysia and are familiar with his smuggling
activities.
Official contacts Many smuggled Rohingya have been interviewed
in detail by the Arakan Project, a research-based
advocacy group funded by Western donors to monitor
the situation of Rohingya in Myanmar and other
countries and promote their protection as
legitimate refugees. In those interviews, they
claimed that smuggling agents maintained "good
contacts" with both Thai and Malaysian immigration
officials.
"Our people are taken to this
plantation in small groups but if we are caught
and deported by the Malaysians, the agents and
their people catch up with us because they seem to
know exactly the point where we have been
deported," said one middle-aged Rohingya male
working in Kuala Lumpur.
"They bring us
back to Malaysia after a few days in the
plantation, but only after our families have
transferred more money to the bank accounts of the
agents ... We are dropped in some mosques where we
stay for a few days before we land menial jobs in
towns and then slowly make our way to more
populated centers where fellow Rohingyas find us
jobs because we have kinship networks," he said.
Not all Rohingya migrants smuggled into
Southeast Asia are as lucky. Many who have been
illegally smuggled to Thailand have been rounded
up and deported to Myanmar through the land border
crossing at Mae Sot. Many subsequently sneak back
to Thailand and are smuggled to Malaysia by
agents, according to a Rohingya woman who was once
deported at Mae Sot and now lives in Kuala Lumpur,
the Malaysian capital.
Others organized by
the agents have been pushed back to sea by Thai
naval authorities, in certain instances on boats
without engines and adequate food and water. The
Thai military stands accused by rights groups of
forcing a group of 1,000 Rohingya back to sea in
2009. It's unclear how many survived the ordeal,
though some rights groups estimate as many as half
of them perished.
Earlier this year three
boats with 91 Rohingya passengers destined for
Malaysia drifted onto a Thai beach and were pushed
back to sea without adequate provisions. They
eventually drifted over 700 kilometers to India's
Andaman and Nicobar Islands, where upon landing
they were administered emergency medical
treatment.
Last year Indonesia rescued
over 400 Rohingya boat people who had arrived in
it's coastal waters in rickety boats. In a rare
rebuke, Indonesia criticized Thailand's practice
of towing Rohingya back out to sea and said it
would consider giving those who arrived on it's
shores refugee status. (Thai prime minister
Abhisit Vejjajiva has said he considers the
Rohingya economic migrants rather than refugees.)
Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan
Project, said that Rohingyas who previously fled
to Bangladesh to escape persecution in their
native Arakan province of Myanmar previously often
migrated onward to Pakistan through India. Many of
the women ended up in Karachi's flesh trade and
the men in the fishing industry, she said.
Lewa's research shows that over the past six
or seven years Rohingya migration patterns have
shifted from east to west after Pakistan descended
into chaos and violence and India created a
stronger, less porous border fence along its
shared border with Bangladesh. As a result, many
Rohingyas started to look east to Malaysia,
Indonesia and other destinations in Southeast
Asia.
To meet that demand and profit off
the desperation, smuggling syndicates with
increasing regional reach have developed and
evolved in Bangladesh. And all indications are
that business will remain brisk for the
foreseeable future.
'Now as Bangladesh
threatens to repatriate [to Myanmar] the Rohingya
refugees who have remained in that country, they
get more and more desperate to seek a safe and
decent livelihood," said Lewa.
Subir
Bhaumik is chief of news operations at a
leading Indian TV channel and a known specialist
on Northeast India and Bangladesh.
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