hundreds of rohingya refugees in
bangladesh are undertaking hazardous
journeys by boat
to escape overcrowded living conditions
in refugee camps
many pay people smugglers to escape to
malaysia
some make it many don't some even end up
in indonesia
after floating for months out in the
open sea
because no country will allow them entry
at least a million rohingya live as
refugees in bangladesh
most escaped a brutal military crackdown
in their home
myanmar in 2017 and now their latest
attempts at finding a place to call home
have also been met with tragedy
they'd been promised an escape to a
better life
what they got was anything but
these images were filmed by one of the
traffickers he later
abandoned the ship a 19 year old
survivor pocketed the phone
a searing record of the abuse he too
suffered
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the rakhine sailors came on the lower
deck with sticks and fan belts
and started beating us indiscriminately
the women went silent
instantly but the men kept resisting
they beat us mercilessly
bruising heads ripping off gears
breaking hands
they wrecked havoc on us
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like many hasan wanted to escape the
camp for malaysia
where smugglers promised a bright future
now he is back in his quality home in a
bangladesh refugee camp
stuck with around a million others like
him
most of them had escaped a military
crackdown in myanmar in 2017
which un investigators said amounted to
genocide
they avoided death but for many their
new life is one of misery
the rohingya camps are very overcrowded
the smugglers are hunting potential
victims every day
it's a multi-million dollar trade and
involves people from various sectors
including fishermen who want a slice of
the proceeds
and even rohingya refugees themselves
some want to help families reunite
this is the husband of juliha begum
she was told she would take less than a
week to meet him in malaysia
her failed journey turned into a
nightmare
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one day my sick sister got into an
argument with the smuggler
when she was coming back from the toilet
and slapped him in the face
the smuggler beat my sick sister with a
leather belt
she bled to death
still stories like these aren't enough
to scare off the desperate
nearly 500 rohingya muslims crossed over
to malaysia this year
about 400 others landed in neighboring
indonesia
but many more failed returning home with
horror stories to tell
or died at sea before they could
and phil robertson is a deputy asia
director of human rights watch he joins
me now
from bangkok phil is enough being done
to prevent the smuggling of an already
persecuted people
well quite clearly not in fact these are
syndicates that have been operating for
a very long time
with the primary aim to send rohingya to
malaysia
they have been changing their tactics as
needed depending on the sort of
enforcement they see in places like
thailand or malaysia but the bottom line
is that rohingya are subjected to
horrible conditions
open boats with limited food and water
exposed
elements highly unsanitary
and facing beatings and sexual
harassment uh from the men who were
supposed to deliver them to a new
country
this kind of smuggling is not new phil
why isn't any action been taken
well i think you have almost a game of
whack-a-mole
where you have various different
crackdowns in some places and
the traffickers pop up in another place
the reality is that there's a great deal
of desperation in the camps
there are almost no opportunities for
people there
and they see the possibility of getting
to malaysia as being the promised land
and many families are willing to
mortgage whatever
money and resources they have in the
camps to try to get one person to
malaysia
who they expect will then be the person
who will send back remittances and
support the family
uh into the future but malaysia hardly
appears to be the promised land when it
comes to the actual
practice of how the government is not
accepting
many of these people who arrive by boat
in fact some of them are detained
and others spend months out at sea some
of them even ending up in indonesia
what does that say about the
responsibility of nations like malaysia
and indonesia
well malaysia should be accepting these
people they should be bringing them
ashore they should be treating them as
refugees and allowing them to undergo
refugee status determination by the u.n
refugee agency
and actually before the last year or so
that was what malaysia generally was
doing
the situation changed during the covet
19 pandemic
and also with a new government in
malaysia that has frankly used
xenophobia
as a point of reference in terms of its
uh kovid 19 response
uh you know the uh the the government of
muyin
yasin the prime minister uh basically
did nothing uh as rohingya have been
increasingly targeted in malaysia by
various different hate speech campaigns
and
it's very sad that uh malaysia which
used to be one of the champions for the
rohingya has
really fallen back so far let's just go
back to bangladesh where most of these
refugees begin their
seaward journeys from is bangladesh
being able to manage nearly a million
refugees single-handedly
bangladesh needs more support from the
international community and it's not
getting it
that's a big problem there's a certain
degree of donor fatigue
that needs to be recognized everybody is
appreciative of the fact that bangladesh
received these people that they opened
the border and allowed them to come
across
but now bangladesh is increasingly
taking a very hostile position towards
the rohingya
in some cases are trying to
involuntarily move people to what is a
de facto prison island uh basan char
you know they're trying to get the
attention of the international community
to focus
pressure on the government in myanmar
and i think that's a laudable goal
but unfortunately they're using uh the
rohingya
as a method to try to
get the international community to act
and you know treating people badly to
try to get more reaction from the
international community is not the right
way forward
speaking of bajanjar this flood-prone
island
refugees have already begun to be moved
there
do we have any initial reports as to how
they're doing
well there's over 1600 of them there now
many of them were duped into going and
told that they might be at the head of a
resettlement queue or
would have livelihoods uh there are a
lot of people who are quite unhappy
uh you know there's a a real lack of
livelihoods there
um you know bangladesh has said that
they're going to allow them to fish and
farm on that island
uh but the the actual groundwater is too
salty for
for planting and uh the uh the the
fishing uh they're not allowing these
people to have their own boats because
they would leave
so uh it's uh it's essentially become a
de facto prison island and that's a
that's a major problem people are
unhappy and uh people have protested and
they've faced reprisals for that
phil robertson thank you very much for
joining us on this
for some though the journey across the
bay of bengal and the andaman sea
can end in tragedy but many are able to
survive
like the family of neymar shah
it was earlier this year that nema shah
held a funeral ceremony for his wife and
daughter
they'd left bangladesh in a rickety boat
to join him in malaysia where he was
working
but then he heard nothing from them
when i worked in malaysia i used to save
part of my salary
i sent money to my family every month my
wife saved the money to pay for the boat
she arranged the trip by herself and she
did it without discussing it with me
he'd given them up for dead but then
a miracle i saw on the news
on videos on the internet that about 100
rohingya landed here on a boat
someone pointed out my wife and daughter
to me in the images
is here at the bottom left holding his
six-year-old daughter
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when i saw them i called my mother and
my wife's mother
and told them they were alive that was
the happiest day of my life
the boat carrying almost 100 rohingya
refugees from camps in bangladesh
was towed to indonesia's sumatra island
by locals
the refugees said they spent four
horrific months at sea
surviving on rice nuts and rain water
and that at least one person died
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from malaysia shah was able to speak
with his wife by phone
he quit his construction job and made
his way illegally by boat to indonesia
there he stuck into the refugee camp and
found his family
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i was only hoping to be happy and
thinking about when i can live together
with my husband again
thank god he came here i'm happy we're
here together now
but despite that stroke of fortune
conditions in the camp
are tough they only have this small
space to call their own
sometimes they buy nuts or small extras
from local market sellers
to supplement the food they're given
i'm very happy to meet my husband here
but i feel sorry for my daughter when
she wants to eat something and we can't
give her anything
because my husband has no income
the lives of nimar majuma and their
daughter are governed by the rhythms of
the camp
but also by economic forces and
immigration laws over which they have no
control
for now they're living hand in hand one
day at the time