Myanmar's Rohingyas in search of a new life end up behind bars
Yeni and Phang Nga in Thailand
The food ran out 14 days into the voyage. The drinking water was also nearly exhausted. The cheap onboard compass was not reliable, so it was only possible to navigate by the stars. Finally, the engine gave out.
The boat made for the nearest coastline, far from its original destination, Malaysia. It beached in southern Thailand, where the 114 men on board were promptly arrested by the Thai police. Their journey to freedom had ended.
Zar Phaw, one of the 114, told the harrowing story to The Irrawaddy from behind the bars of the visitors' section of the local jail in Takuapa, southern Thailand. The 38-year-old Muslim man and his 113 companions had spent more than two weeks in storm-tossed waters of the Andaman Sea in a small open boat.
Each had paid between 12,000 and 15,000 kyat (US $9-11) for the trip. They came from villages along the border between Myanmar (Burma) and Bangladesh, homeland of nearly 1 million Muslim Rohingyas, virtually outlawed by the Myanmar's military regime.
The 114 decided to take their fate into their own hands and embarked on a dangerous journey to find a better life in Malaysia, where about 12,000 Rohingyas live. They weren't alone-other groups of Rohingyas landed along the Thai coast at the end of 2006, and other boats are believed to be still on the way.
"Many people believe we can find a better life in Malaysia," said Zar Phaw. "So I risked all on the boat."
The plight of Myanma's Rohingyas has long been one of the worst stains on the country's deplorable human rights record. Officially, the 850,000 Rohingyas living in the townships of Maungdaw, Buthidaung and Rathedaung, in northern Arakan State, don't even exist. Nationalist campaigns initiated by the Myanmar government, often with the support of local Buddhist communities, have dismissed the Rohingyas as illegal �migr�s who infiltrated the country from neighboring Bangladesh and India. As a result, they are subjected to various forms of extortion and arbitrary taxation, land confiscation, forced eviction and destruction of their homes, and even restrictions on marriage.
In 1991, waves of Rohingya refugees fled across Myanmar's western border to Bangladesh to escape oppression. Most were repatriated, sometimes forcibly, under an agreement between Bangladesh and Myanmar, and also with the involvement of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. But observers say that repatriated refugees and new arrivals have continued to enter Bangladesh.
The flow of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh-and now into the open sea off the Arakan coast-is actually being encouraged by the Myanmar regime, according to Chris Lewa, a researcher on Rohingyas and coordinator of the Bangkok-based Arakan Project. She says the regime policy is to make life so difficult for the Rohingyas, even to the extent of restricting their access to food, that they are forced to seek livelihoods elsewhere.
"The military regime uses food as a weapon, and its strategy has proven effective in compelling Rohingyas to leave Arakan," Lewa says. "It moves Rohingyas from visible refugees into invisible refugees, labeled economic migrants."
But the Rohingyas are just as badly off in Bangladesh, where they are forbidden to seek legitimate employment. As illegal migrants, they are exploited by local employers, who pay less than $1 a day. "Life is so hard there that I could not afford to support my seven children and my wife," said Zar Phaw.
Unwanted in both Myanmar and Bangladesh, the Rohingyas look south, to Malaysia, where they hope to find understanding from a Muslim people and government.
Many succeeded in resettling in Malaysia in the early 1990s, but subsequent high-profile Rohingya actions there brought unwelcome attention from the authorities, nervous at any incidents at a time of heightened fears of terrorist activity in Southeast Asia.
In 2002, several Rohingya groups broke into the UNHCR compound in Kuala Lumpur and sought asylum. Two years later, a group of Rohingya asylum seekers set ablaze the Myanmar embassy in Kuala Lumpur and attacked the Ambassador.
Despite the two incidents, the Malaysian immigration department pressed on with a program to register Rohingyas in legal employment and allow Rohingya children to attend Malaysian schools, but suspended it last August, claiming corrupt agents and middlemen were making money from the scheme.
The status of Rohingyas arriving in southern Thailand is also precarious. More than 300 arrested by Thai police after landing on southern Thai beaches are being charged with illegal entry and face deportation. A social worker assisting the detained Rohingyas said in December 2006 that several hundred were thought to be on their way south in as many as 14 boats. Other boat people are reported to have landed unseen and to be in hiding.
Neither Thailand nor Malaysia has signed the two central international agreements on the treatment of refugees-the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees-so a grim future faces the boat people. Many are desperate at the prospect of being deported to Myanmar and facing not only renewed harassment but imprisonment and worse.
"Kill me here," declared Zar Phaw, gripping the prison bars. "I don't want to die at the hands of torturers."