Rohingya Muslims pay off traffickers to save stranded migrants

As Mahmoud Yasien kneeled before the people smugglers and begged for his pregnant wife’s life, the Rohingya migrant’s dreams of a better life evaporated, his ship stranded hundreds of miles from its destination in Malaysia.
His pleas spared her life and when phone calls relayed news of their nightmare journey back to their community in a displacement camp in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state, neighbours cobbled together the cash to pay off the smugglers and buy them back from the boat.
“She was unconscious and they said they would throw her in the water. But I begged at their feet and apologised. That’s why they didn’t throw her overboard,” said the 24-year-old who arrived back in Anauk San Pya camp outside the town of Sittwe on Sunday.
His entreaties for mercy were not, however, enough to spare Bebe Nu Asha, who is eight months pregnant, the beatings or starvation rations handed out by the smugglers who held them at sea for 40 days.
An estimated 2,000 other migrants remain stranded on ships off Myanmar and Bangladesh — with little food or water — as smugglers mull their next move after a Thai crackdown disrupted established trafficking routes through that country, which had long been used to funnel fleeing Rohingya to Malaysia.
The United Nations says desperate relatives are buying back some migrants from those boats for around $300 per head — stemming the smugglers’ losses after their cash-cow networks further south were pulled.
Fears for the passengers’ safety are mounting with the monsoon storms ready to lash the region.
But life in Anauk San Pya, one of a cluster of bleak sprawling camps of bamboo huts provided by overseas donors to the marginalised Rohingya, is not much better, Yasien says.
“If we went to Malaysia, we would be able to eat... We have nothing here, no job. If we get food, we will eat. Otherwise, we die,” he said.
The Muslim Rohingya are stateless and reviled by Myanmar’s Buddhist majority, who deny their estimated 1.3 million community rights by describing them as foreigners.
Some 140,000 people, the majority Rohingya, were displaced by deadly communal violence in Rakhine in 2012 between local Buddhists and Rohingya.
Each year thousands try to flee Rakhine State, with the rate of departures particularly high at this time of the year as many are desperate to leave before the monsoon adds further danger to an already perilous crossing.
Food in the camps is carefully rationed, limited to staples such as rice and pulses, and suffocating restrictions prevent the Rohingya from travelling and working.
Wiry and energetic Yasien had not had a job for three years when he finally made the decision to sail to Malaysia with his wife.