The wind had whipped the waves to nearly three times the woman's height when her panicked voice crackled over the phone.
“Our boat has sunk!” Setera Begum shouted, as a storm threatened to spill her and around 180 others into the inky black sea south of Bangladesh. “Only half of it is still afloat!”
It’s impossible to know whether any of those lives could have been saved, because almost no one was looking to save them in the first place. Instead, the Rohingya are often abandoned and left to die on the water, just as on land. Even when officials knew the boats’ locations in recent months, the United Nations’ refugee agency says its repeated pleas to maritime authorities to rescue some of them have gone ignored.
There is no reason why regional governments could not or cannot coordinate and rescue these boats, says John Quinley, director of human rights group Fortify Rights. Beyond fear is hunger. The Rohingya are banned from working and rely on food rations, which have been slashed due to a drop in global donations. Meanwhile, a military coup in 2021 in Myanmar has made any safe return home at best a distant dream.Jutting up from the dust and the dirt of Nayapara camp in Bangladesh are bamboo, tarp and tin huts jammed along labyrinthine pathways.
Back in Myanmar, Jamal was a rice farmer and a youth leader of their village. After his dad died, he became a father figure to his younger siblings, including Bulbul, who was 15 years his junior. But the money had also made the family targets of kidnappers, Shukkur says, and Setera had begun to fear for their lives. The local gangs know which of the block’s residents have relatives abroad who could afford a ransom.
“Grandpa, you will not need to scold us anymore,” one of the girls told Shukkur. “Everything will be all right.”In a nearby shelter, another family was in agony. It was from here that a small fishing boat began ferrying passengers to Jamal’s waiting vessel. The AP has reconstructed their journey based on interviews with 28 relatives of those on board, audio recordings of calls from the boat, interviews with three eyewitnesses, and photos and videos.
The little boy was frightened of the water. Bibi and her husband passed him back and forth, trying to comfort him, as they spoke with her parents. “Pray for us,” they said. Asma packed them along with snacks from her father’s shop, plus three sets of clothes to fit her pregnant and postpartum body. Then Asma reluctantly followed her husband onto Jamal’s boat, along with her 13-year-old brother.
On board were 104 people, including a man named Kafayet Ullah. According to Kafayet, he was merely a passenger. According to others, he was the captain. But unlike Kafayet, Jamal had experience and a satellite phone. So when Jamal finished fixing the engine, he set off again, and Kafayet followed.A powerful storm descended upon them. The boats thrashed in the merciless waves. Kafayet’s terrified passengers sobbed as the rain pounded down and the tempest washed their supplies overboard.
All he has left now of the grandsons he called his “lovely ones” are their clothing and his memories. He stares at a pair of little brown shoes with Velcro straps that 6-year-old Tasin once wore, and weeps. When he holds them, he says, he feels he is holding his grandson.
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