{"id":153912,"date":"2020-02-17T12:01:01","date_gmt":"2020-02-17T12:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=153912"},"modified":"2020-02-13T09:27:03","modified_gmt":"2020-02-13T09:27:03","slug":"deaths-of-16-rohingya-at-sea-raises-fears-trafficking-ring-has-been-revived","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/02\/deaths-of-16-rohingya-at-sea-raises-fears-trafficking-ring-has-been-revived\/","title":{"rendered":"Deaths of 16 Rohingya at Sea Raises Fears Trafficking Ring Has Been Revived"},"content":{"rendered":"

Smugglers responsible for mass atrocities in Thailand may be linked to capsized boat carrying refugees from Bangladesh to Malaysia.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The overloaded boat was carrying about 138 people when it capsized.
Photograph: Joynal Abedin\/AP<\/p><\/div>\n

12 Feb 2020 – <\/em>Activists fear a dangerous transnational trafficking network is being revived after at least 16 Rohingya<\/a> refugees drowned in the Bay of Bengal yesterday morning.<\/p>\n

Bangladeshi officials said a wooden fishing boat carrying about 138 people capsized near Bangladesh\u2019s St Martin\u2019s island in the early hours.<\/p>\n

A joint statement by the International Organization for Migration and the UN refugee agency said at least 68 people had been rescued.<\/p>\n

The UN estimated that more than 170,000 people were trafficked<\/a> to south-east Asia by boat from 2012\u20132015, when Thailand found mass graves at detention camps used to hold the refugees until family members paid ransoms.<\/p>\n

The network had been largely dormant since then but fears of new activity have risen since more than 700,000 Rohingya fled the Myanmar military in 2017, taking Bangladesh\u2019s total population of Rohingya refugees to more than a million.<\/p>\n

The Bangladeshi coastguard<\/a> has occasionally stopped boats trying to leave through the Bay of Bengal, while a small number of boats from either Bangladesh or Myanmar have arrived in Malaysia.<\/p>\n

Bangkok-based Rohingya activist Hajee Ismail said both the few remaining Rohingya in Myanmar and the refugees living in Bangladeshi camps were struggling to see a future for themselves, which was allowing people smugglers to entice them with promises of greater freedom in Malaysia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not a new network, it\u2019s the old network that woke up now. Since 2015, they\u2019ve been living silently because in Thailand it was difficult to move,\u201d said Ismail, who runs the Rohingya Peace Network in Thailand<\/a> group, which often provides for support for trafficking victims intercepted by Thai authorities.<\/p>\n

He said people were also being taken to Malaysia by land, on long journeys through India, Myanmar and Thailand.<\/p>\n

Many of those trafficked to Malaysia were young women and girls taken for marriages arranged with Rohingya men but Ismail said there had been a sharp rise in numbers trying to escape the camps.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s more, more, more. It\u2019s increasing day-by-day,\u201d he said. \u201cSome of our brothers and sisters are thinking that in the refugee camps there is no solution and there is no future for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said around 500 Rohingya were in Thai custody after being intercepted en route to Malaysia.<\/p>\n

The UN has estimated that around 600,000 Rohingya are still living in Myanmar \u201cunder the threat of genocide<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tun Khin, a UK-based Rohingya diaspora leader, called the incident an \u201cavoidable tragedy\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is harrowing that Rohingya are so desperate to build better lives for themselves that they risk everything on dangerous journeys by sea,\u201d he said in a statement issued by the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK.<\/p>\n

Puttanee Kangkun, human rights specialist with the Bangkok-based rights group Fortify Rights, said: \u201cThe mass movements will always happen when the situation is good enough [for the traffickers].\u201d<\/p>\n

Rohingya activist Ziaur Rahman, who was kidnapped in Bangladesh<\/a> and trafficked to Malaysia in 2014, said Rohingya were being exploited because the international community had not provided a solution to decades of persecution.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis thing needs to be stopped, you saw before so many people were killed. Their bodies will be found in the sea, their bodies will be in the jungle and the mountains,\u201d he said, adding that he believed it was the same criminal syndicate who trafficked him to Malaysia.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s become a big business for many people, in Myanmar, Bangladesh, Thailand and Malaysia. They\u2019re taking advantage and killing my people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thailand prosecuted 62 members of the trafficking network<\/a> in July 2017, including a senior army general, and in 2019 Malaysia established a royal commission of inquiry to investigate human trafficking.<\/p>\n

Many of those prosecuted were involved in transporting Rohingya and Bangladeshis within Thailand, where they were routinely held captive in Thai jungles until their relatives agreed to pay ransoms of around $2,000 (\u00a31,548).<\/p>\n

Rahman said Malaysia offered little improvement in living conditions for the Rohingya.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality is I\u2019ve been here six years and still I\u2019m living in limbo, there is no future,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not allowed to work, our kids cannot study, how are we going to eat? Every day we are struggling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

12 Feb 2020 – Activists fear a dangerous transnational trafficking network is being revived after at least 16 Rohingya refugees drowned in the Bay of Bengal yesterday morning. Smugglers responsible for mass atrocities in Thailand may be linked to capsized boat carrying refugees from Bangladesh to Malaysia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":153913,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[677],"tags":[240,1692,1688,1198,526,101,100,1199,1782,865,260,487,1644,651,1417,103,107,527,985,99,124],"class_list":["post-153912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-updates-on-myanmar-rohingya-genocide","tag-asia","tag-aung-san-suu-kyi","tag-bangladesh","tag-buddhism","tag-burma-myanmar","tag-cultural-violence","tag-direct-violence","tag-ethnic-cleansing","tag-free-rohingya-coalition","tag-genocide","tag-history","tag-human-rights","tag-international-court-of-justice-icj","tag-justice","tag-maung-zarni","tag-racism","tag-religion","tag-rohingya","tag-social-justice","tag-structural-violence","tag-united-nations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}