DHAKA: Fading hopes for a future and the desire to be reunited with family are pushing increasing numbers of Rohingya to flee overcrowded refugee camps in Bangladesh and make perilous journeys across the Andaman Sea.
Bangladesh hosts more than 1.2 million Rohingya Muslims, most of whom escaped persecution in neighboring Myanmar during a military crackdown in 2017. The majority live in Cox’s Bazar district, a coastal region in the east of the country, which is now the world’s largest refugee settlement.
But the recent rescue of dozens of starving Rohingya who had spent more than a month adrift on a stricken boat, has shone a spotlight on the increasing number of people trying to leave the squalid camps of Cox’s Bazar and cross the Andaman Sea in search of a better life.
The boat was one of several such vessels to leave Bangladesh in late November. But just a few days into the journey, its engines failed and its occupants were left adrfit. Appeals to the governments of several countries to rescue them fell on deaf ears, and it was not until late December, as the boat entered Indonesian waters, that local fishermen answered the call. Number of refugees attempting to cross Andaman Sea up sixfold since 2020.
, UNHCR says.
Another boat was intercepted by the Sri Lankan navy and a third by a Vietnamese offshore company, which handed the refugees over to the Myanmar navy. It was not immediately clear what would happen to them.
In early December, the U. N. refugee agency UNHCR issued an alert about the “dramatic increase” in the number of people, mostly Rohingya, attempting to cross the Andaman Sea from both Bangladesh and Myanmar. It estimated there had been a sixfold rise since 2020 and that at least 119 people had died making such crossings.
The figures did not include those who the rescued refugees said had been on the boats that left Cox’s Bazar in November but were now missing at sea, presumed dead.
“Since 2018, every year we have been noticing an increasing trend of Rohingyas taking perilous journey across the sea during November to February as the sea is calm and quiet in this period,” Asif Munir, an immigration and refugee affairs analyst, told Arab News.
For most, the dangerous crossings are the only option available to escape the limbo they face in Bangladesh.
