XXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
PULITZER PRIZE ENTRY XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX 1
BY JASON SZEP AND STUART GRUDGINGS
PADANG BESAR, THAILAND, JULY 17
Authorities implicated
in Rohingya smuggling
networks
PULITZER PRIZE ENTRY INTERNATIONAL REPORTING 1
SENT TO DETENTION: Rohingya boat people, trying to escape to Malaysia, often wind up in Thailand at immigration camps such as this one in
Kanchanaburi province.
REUTERS/ATHIT PEREWONGMETHA
THE WAR ON THE ROHINGYAS
THE WAR ON THE ROHINGYAS AUTHORITIES IMPLICATED IN ROHINGYA SMUGGLING NETWORKS
PULITZER PRIZE ENTRY INTERNATIONAL REPORTING 2
T
he beatings were accompa-
nied by threats: If his fam-
ily didn’t produce the money,
Myanmar refugee Abdul Sabur
would be sold into slavery on a sh-
ing boat, his captors shouted, lash-
ing him with bamboo sticks.
It had been more than two
months since Sabur and his wife
set sail from Myanmar with 118
other Rohingya Muslims to escape
violence and persecution. Twelve
died on the disastrous voyage. e
survivors were imprisoned in India
and then handed over to people
smugglers in southern ailand.
As the smugglers beat Sabur
in their jungle hide-out, they kept a
phone line open so that his relatives
could hear his screams and speed
up payment of $1,800 to secure
his release.
“Every time there was a delay
or problem with the payment they would hurt us again,” said Sabur, a tall sherman from Myanmar’s western
Rakhine state.
He was part of the swelling ood of Rohingya who have ed Myanmar by sea this past year, in one of the
biggest movements of boat people since the Vietnam War ended.
eir fast-growing exodus is a sign of Muslim desperation in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, also known
as Burma. Ethnic and religious tensions simmered during 49 years of military rule. But under the reformist
government that took power in March 2011, Myanmar has endured its worst communal bloodshed in generations.
A Reuters investigation, based on interviews with people smugglers and more than two dozen survivors of
boat voyages, reveals how some ai naval security forces work systematically with smugglers to prot from the
surge in eeing Rohingya. e lucrative smuggling network transports the Rohingya mainly into neighboring
Malaysia, a Muslim-majority country they view as a haven from persecution.
Once in the smugglers’ hands, Rohingya men are often beaten until they come up with the money for their
passage. ose who can’t pay are handed over to trackers, who sometimes sell the men as indentured servants
on farms or into slavery on ai shing boats. ere, they become part of the country’s $8 billion seafood-export
business, which supplies consumers in the United States, Japan and Europe.
Some Rohingya women are sold as brides, Reuters found. Other Rohingya languish in overcrowded ai
and Malaysian immigration detention centers.
MYANMAR
Rakhine
R
a
SRI LANKA
THAILAND
INDONESIA
MALAYSIA
BANGLADESH
29,000
refugees
2,000
875
28,000
34,626 Rohingya have le Myanmar
and Bangladesh since June 2012.
The Rohingya exodus
Sources: Arakan project, UNHCR,
The Burmese Rohingya Community in Australia (BRCA)
AUSTRALIA
2,000
THE WAR ON THE ROHINGYAS AUTHORITIES IMPLICATED IN ROHINGYA SMUGGLING NETWORKS
PULITZER PRIZE ENTRY INTERNATIONAL REPORTING 3
Reuters reconstructed one
deadly journey by 120 Rohingya,
tracing their dealings with
smugglers through interviews
with the passengers and their
families. ey included Sabur and
his 46-year-old mother-in-law
Sabmeraz; Rahim, a 22-year-old
rice farmer, and his friend Abdul
Hamid, 27; and Abdul Rahim, 27,
a shopkeeper.
While the death toll on
their boat was unusually high,
the accounts of mistreatment by
authorities and smugglers were
similar to those of survivors from
other boats interviewed by Reuters.
e Rohingya exodus,
and the state measures that
fuel it, undermine Myanmar’s
carefully crafted image of ethnic
reconciliation and stability that
helped persuade the United States
and Europe to suspend most
sanctions.
At least 800 people, mostly
Rohingya, have died at sea after
their boats broke down or capsized
in the past year, says the Arakan
Project, an advocacy group that has
studied Rohingya migration since
2006. e escalating death toll
prompted the United Nations this
year to call that part of the Indian
Ocean one of world’s “deadliest
stretches of water.”
EXTENDED FAMILIES
For more than a decade, Rohingya
men have set sail in search of work
Rohingya buy boat
passage from a local
broker in Myanmar’s
Rakhine State, usually
for around $205.
1
Money goes to boat owner,
with commission to local
broker who may pay bribe
to border control oicials
to let boat leave.
2
Broker in Myanmar
sends passenger list
to a people smuggler
in Thailand.
3
Smuggler notifies Thai
naval security forces of
when the boat is due
to arrive.
4
Thai naval forces spot the boat; notify the
smuggler and marine police of its location.
Smuggler’s boat and marine police bring it
to shore. Naval forces are paid about $65
per Rohingya; police get around $160.
5
Smuggler in Thailand puts the Rohingya in
rented homes, calls their family and demands
money. Rohingya pays smuggler around $950
per person up front and another $950 upon
arrival in Malaysia.
6
Those who have paid are sent by small boat
or concealed in the back of pickup trucks
and taken to the Malaysian border. Smuggler
pays border police around $32 per person to
allow them to pass the Malaysia border.
7
Rohingya men who can’t pay are usually
sold to fishing companies or plantations
for between $320 and $640 per person.
Rohingya women fetch $1,600 and
occasionally are sold as brides
to Rohingya men in Malaysia.
8
Source: Reuters
How Muslim
Rohingyas are
exploited in a
human
traicking ring.
Exploiting
the
Rohingya
THE WAR ON THE ROHINGYAS AUTHORITIES IMPLICATED IN ROHINGYA SMUGGLING NETWORKS
PULITZER PRIZE ENTRY INTERNATIONAL REPORTING 4
in neighboring countries. A one-way voyage typically
costs about 200,000 kyat, or $205, a small fortune by
local standards. e extended Rohingya families who
raise the sum regard it as an investment; many survive o
money sent from relatives overseas.
e number boarding boats from Myanmar
and neighboring Bangladesh reached 34,626 people
from June 2012 to May of this year – more than
four times the previous year, says the Arakan Project.
Almost all are Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar.
Unprecedented numbers of women and children are
making these dangerous voyages.
A sophisticated smuggling industry is developing
around them, drawing in other refugees across South
Asia. Ramshackle shing boats are being replaced by
cargo ships crewed by smugglers and teeming with
passengers. In June alone, six such ships disgorged
hundreds of Rohingya and other refugees on remote
ai islands controlled by smugglers, the Arakan
Project said.
Sabur and the others who sailed on the doomed
35-foot shing boat came from Rakhine, a rugged
coastal state where Rohingya claim a centuries-old
lineage. e government calls them illegal “Bengali” migrants from Bangladesh who arrived during British
rule in the 19th century. Most of the 1.1 million Rohingya of Rakhine state are denied citizenship and refused
passports.
Machete-wielding Rakhine Buddhists destroyed Sabur’s village last October, forcing him to abandon his home
south of Sittwe, capital of Rakhine state. Last year’s communal unrest in Rakhine made 140,000 homeless, most of
them Rohingya. Myanmar’s government says 192 people died; Rohingya activists put the toll as high as 748.
Before the violence, the Rohingya were the poorest people in the second-poorest state of Southeast Asia’s
poorest country. Today, despite Myanmar’s historic reforms, they are worse o.
Tens of thousands live in squalid, disease-ridden displacement camps on the outskirts of Sittwe. Armed
checkpoints prevent them from returning to the paddy elds and markets on which their livelihoods depend.
Rohingya families in some areas have been banned from having more than two children.
Sabur’s 33-member extended family spent several months wandering between camps before the family
patriarch, an Islamic teacher in Malaysia named Arif Ali, helped them buy a shing boat. ey planned to sail
straight to Malaysia to avoid ailand’s notorious smugglers.
Dozens of other paying passengers signed up for the voyage, along with an inexperienced captain who
steered them to disaster.
KICKED AROUND: Abdul Sobur with his wife Monzurah. He was
displaced during last year’s religious violence, survived a perilous sea
voyage, only to fall into the hands of people smugglers who lashed him
with canes.
REUTERS/BAZUKI MUHAMMAD
People started dying, one by one. We
thought we would all die.
Sabmeraz
The grandmother in the family that owned the doomed fishing boat
THE WAR ON THE ROHINGYAS AUTHORITIES IMPLICATED IN ROHINGYA SMUGGLING NETWORKS
PULITZER PRIZE ENTRY INTERNATIONAL REPORTING 5
NO PLACE FOR THEM: A Rohingya behind bars at a Thai detention camp (above), at Muslim prayers at a mosque in Malaysia (left), and walking by
the sea near a displacement camp in Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state.
REUTERS/ATHIT PEREWONGMETHA
REUTERS/BAZUKI MUHAMMAD
REUTERS/DAMIR SAGOLJ
THE WAR ON THE ROHINGYAS AUTHORITIES IMPLICATED IN ROHINGYA SMUGGLING NETWORKS
PULITZER PRIZE ENTRY INTERNATIONAL REPORTING 6
“DYING, ONE BY ONE”
e small shing boat set o from Myengu Island near
Sittwe on Feb. 15. e rst two days went smoothly.
Passengers huddled in groups, eating rice, dried sh and
potatoes cooked in small pots over rewood. Space was
so tight no one could stretch their legs while sleeping,
said Rahim, the rice farmer, who like many Rohingya
Muslims goes by one name.
Rahim’s last few months had been horric. A
Rakhine mob killed his older brother in October
and burned his family’s rice farm to the ground. He
spent two months in jail and was never told why. “e
charge seemed to be that I was a young man,” he said.
Rakhine state authorities have acknowledged arresting
Rohingya men deemed a threat to security.
High seas and gusting winds nearly swamped
the boat on the third day. e captain seemed to
panic, survivors said. Fearing the ship would capsize,
he dumped ve bags of rice and two water tanks
overboard – half their supplies.
It steadied, but it was soon clear they had another
problem – the captain admitted he was lost. By Feb.
24, after more than a week at sea, supplies of water,
food and fuel were gone.
“People started dying, one by one,” said Sabmeraz, the grandmother.
e Islamic janaza funeral prayer was whispered over the washed and shrouded corpses of four women and
two children who died rst. Among them: Sabmeraz’s daughter and two young grandchildren.
“We thought we would all die,” Sabmeraz recalled.
Many gulped sea water, making them even weaker. Some drank their own urine. e sick relieved themselves
where they lay. Floorboards became slick with vomit and feces. Some people appeared wild-eyed before losing
consciousness “like they had gone mad,” said Abdul Hamid.
On the morning of the 12th day, the shopkeeper Abdul Rahim wrapped his two-year-old daughter, Mozia,
in cloth, performed funeral rites and slipped her tiny body into the sea. e next morning he did the same for his
wife, Muju.
His father, Furkan, had warned Abdul Rahim not to take the two children – Mozia and her ve-year-old
sister, Morja. e family had been better o than most Rohingya. ey owned a popular hardware store in
Sittwe district. After it was reduced to rubble in the June violence, they moved into a camp.
On the night Abdul Rahim was leaving, Furkan recalls pleading with him on the jetty: “If you want to go,
you can go. But leave our grandchildren with us.”
Abdul Rahim refused. “I’ve lost everything, my house, my job,” he recalls replying. “What else can I do?”
FATHER’S PLEA: Fukan begged his son Abdul Rahim to leave his wife
and children behind when they embarked on a dilapidated fishing boat
bound for Malaysia in February. Abdul Rahim’s wife and two-year-old
child died during the journey.
REUTERS/DAMIR SAGOLJ
The aim of the boat people is to look for
future prospects. How can I stop them?
Khin Yi
Myanmar Minister of Immigration and Population
THE WAR ON THE ROHINGYAS AUTHORITIES IMPLICATED IN ROHINGYA SMUGGLING NETWORKS
PULITZER PRIZE ENTRY INTERNATIONAL REPORTING 7
On Feb. 28, hours after Abdul Rahim’s wife died,
the refugees spotted a Singapore-owned tugboat,
the Star Jakarta. It was pulling an empty Indian-
owned barge, the Ganpati, en route to Mumbai from
Myanmar. e refugee men shouted but the slow-
moving barge didn’t stop.
But as the Ganpati moved by, a dozen Rohingya
men jumped into the sea with a rope. ey swam to
the barge, xed the rope and towed their boat close
behind so people could board. By evening, 108 of them
were on the barge.
Mohammed Salim, a soccer-loving grocery clerk,
and a young woman, both in their 20s, were too weak
to move. Close to death, they were cut adrift; the boat
took on water and submerged in the rough seas.
“He was our hope,” said Salim’s father,
Mohammad Kassim, 71, who emptied his savings to
pay the 500,000 kyat ($515) cost of the journey.
Of the 12 who died on the boat, 11 were women and children.
MISTAKEN FOR PIRATES
What happened next shows how the problems of reform-era Myanmar
are rapidly becoming Asia’s.
e tugboat captain mistook the Rohingya for pirates and radioed
for help, said Bhavna Dayal, a spokeswoman for Punj Lloyd Group, the
Indian company that owns the barge. Within hours, an Indian Coast
Guard ship arrived. Ocers red into the air and ordered the Rohingya
to the oor.
Rahim, the rice farmer, said he and ve others were beaten with a
rubber baton. With the help of some Hindi picked up from Bollywood
lms, they explained they were eeing the strife in Rakhine state. After that, everyone received food, water and
rst aid, he said.
Another Indian Coast Guard ship, the Aruna Asaf Ali, arrived. It took the women and children to the
Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an Indian archipelago a short voyage to the south, before returning for the men.
In Diglipur, the largest town in North Andaman Island, immigration authorities separated the men from
women and children, putting them all in cells. Guards beat them at will, Rahim said, and rummaged through
their belongings for money. He lost 60,000 kyat ($62) and hid his remaining 60,000 kyat in a crack in a wall.
Rupinder Singh, the police superintendent in Diglipur, denied anyone was beaten or robbed.
After about a month, the Rohingya were moved to a bigger detention center near the state capital Port Blair.
ey joined about 300 other Muslims, mostly Rohingya from Myanmar, who had been rescued at sea. e men
STILL STATELESS: Abdul Rahim sits with his new wife Ruksana Morjan
and his daughter at their home in a Kuala Lumpur suburb. He lost
his wife (Ruksana’s sister) and two-year-old at sea on the journey to
Malaysia. Rohingya are not considered citizens in Myanmar and wait
years to be granted asylum in Malaysia.
REUTERS/BAZUKI MUHAMMAD
$16,100
The amount of money for
a boat of 100 people that
Thai police receive from
smugglers for escorting
Rohingya ashore.
Source: veteran Thai smuggler
THE WAR ON THE ROHINGYAS AUTHORITIES IMPLICATED IN ROHINGYA SMUGGLING NETWORKS
PULITZER PRIZE ENTRY INTERNATIONAL REPORTING 8
went on a one-day hunger strike, demanding to be sent
to Malaysia.
e protest seemed to work. Indian authorities
brought all 420 of them into international waters and
transferred them to a double-decker ferry, said the
Rohingya passengers.
“ey told us this ship would take us straight to
Malaysia,” said Sabur.
It was run, however, by ailand-based smugglers,
he said.
Commander P.V.S. Satish, speaking for the Indian
Navy and the Indian Coast Guard, said there was
“absolutely no truth” to the allegation that the Navy
handed the Rohingya to smugglers.
After four days at sea, the Rohingya approached
ailand’s southern Satun province around April 18.
ey were split into smaller boats. Some were taken to
small islands, others to the mainland. e smugglers
explained they needed to recoup the 10 million kyat
($10,300) they had paid for renting the ferry.
ECONOMICS OF TRAFFICKING
ailand portrays itself as an accidental destination for
Malaysia-bound Rohingya: ey wash ashore and then
ee or get detained.
In truth, ailand is a smuggler’s paradise, and the stateless Rohingya are big business. Smugglers seek them
out, aware their relatives will pay to move them on. is can blur the lines between smuggling and tracking.
Smuggling, done with the consent of those involved, diers from tracking, the business of trapping people
by force or deception into labor or prostitution. e distinction is critical.
An annual U.S. State Department report, monitoring global eorts to combat modern slavery, has for the
last four years kept ailand on a so-called Tier 2 Watch List, a notch above the worst oenders, such as North
Korea. A drop to Tier 3 can trigger sanctions, including the blocking of World Bank aid.
A veteran smuggler in ailand described the economics of the trade in a rare interview. Each adult
Rohingya is valued at up to $2,000, yielding smugglers a net prot of 10,000 baht ($320) after bribes and other
costs, the smuggler said. In addition to the Royal ai Navy, the seas are patrolled by the ai Marine Police and
by local militias under the control of military commanders.
“Ten years ago, the money went directly to the brokers. Now it goes to all these ocials as well,” said the
smuggler, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
A broker in Myanmar typically sends a passenger list with a departure date to a counterpart in ailand, the
smuggler said. ai navy or militia commanders are then notied to intercept boats and sometimes guide them
COMFORTING THE AFFLICTED: Narunisa, a 25-year-old Rohingya
woman, is comforted by her young daughters and women at an
immigration camp in southern Thailand. A Thai policeman had lured her
out of the camp and into the hands of a Rohingya man who raped her.
REUTERS/DAMIR SAGOLJ
Every day we ask when we can leave
this place, but we have no idea if that will ever
happen.
Faizal Haq
One of around 2,000 Rohingya held in Thai immigration camps
THE WAR ON THE ROHINGYAS AUTHORITIES IMPLICATED IN ROHINGYA SMUGGLING NETWORKS
PULITZER PRIZE ENTRY INTERNATIONAL REPORTING 9
to pre-arranged spots, said the smuggler.
e ai naval forces usually earn about 2,000
baht ($65) per Rohingya for spotting a boat or turning
a blind eye, said the smuggler, who works in the
southern ai region of Phang Nga and deals directly
with the navy and police.
Police receive 5,000 baht ($160) per Rohingya, or
about 500,000 baht ($16,100) for a boat of 100, the
smuggler said.
Another smuggler, himself a Rohingya based
in Kuala Lumpur, said ai naval forces help guide
boatloads to arranged spots. He said his group
maintains close phone contact with local commanders.
He estimated his group has smuggled up to 4,000
people into Malaysia in the past six months.
Relatives in Malaysia must make an initial deposit
of 3,000 ringgit ($950) into Malaysian bank accounts,
he said, followed by a second payment for the same amount once the refugees reach the country.
Naval ships do not always work with the smugglers. Some follow ailand’s ocial “help on” policy, whereby
Rohingya boats are supplied with fuel and provisions on condition they sail onward.
e ai navy and police denied any involvement in Rohingya smuggling. Manasvi Srisodapol, a ai
Foreign Ministry spokesman, said that there has been no evidence of the navy tracking or abusing Rohingya
for several years.
CAGES AND THREATS
Anti-tracking campaigners have produced mounting evidence of the widespread use of slave labor from
countries such as Myanmar on ai shing boats, which face an acute labor shortage.
Fishing companies buy Rohingya men for between 10,000 baht ($320) and 20,000 baht ($640), depending
on age and strength, said the smuggler in Phang Nga. He recounted sales of Rohingya in the past year to
Indonesian and Singapore shing rms.
is has made the industry a major source of U.S. concern over ailand’s record on human tracking.
About 8 percent of ai seafood exports go to supermarkets and restaurants in the United States, the second
biggest export market after Japan.
e ai government has said it is serious about tackling human tracking, though no government minister
has publicly acknowledged that slavery exists in the shing industry.
Sabur, his wife Monzurah and more than a dozen Rohingya thought slavery might be their fate. e
smugglers held them on the ai island for ve weeks. e captors said they would be sold to sheries, pig farms
or plantations if money didn’t arrive soon.
“We were too scared to sleep at night,” said Monzurah, 19 years old.
Arif Ali, the family patriarch in Kuala Lumpur, managed to raise about $21,000 to secure the release of 19 of
DELIVERANCE: A Rohingya man prays during the Muslim fasting
month of Ramadan at an immigration camp in southern Thailand. Most
of the Rohingya from Myanmar are trying to find asylum in neighboring
Malaysia.
REUTERS/ATHIT PEREWONGMETHA
THE WAR ON THE ROHINGYAS AUTHORITIES IMPLICATED IN ROHINGYA SMUGGLING NETWORKS
PULITZER PRIZE ENTRY INTERNATIONAL REPORTING 10
his relatives, including his sister Sabmeraz, Sabur, and Monzurah. ey were taken on foot across the border into
Malaysia in May. But 10 of the family, all men, remained imprisoned on the island as he struggled to raise more
funds.
As Ali was interviewed in early June, his cellphone rang and he had a brief, heated conversation. “ey call
every day,” he said. “ey say if we call the police they will kill them.”
Some women without money are sold as brides for 50,000 baht ($1,600) each, typically to Rohingya men in
Malaysia, the ai smuggler said. Refugees who are caught and detained by ai authorities also face the risk of
abuse.
At a detention center in Phang Nga in southern ailand, 269 Rohingya men and boys lived in cage-like
cells that stank of sweat and urine when a Reuters journalist visited recently. Most had been there six months.
Some used crutches because their muscles had atrophied.
“Every day we ask when we can leave this place, but we have no idea if that will ever happen,” said Faizal
Haq, 14.
ey are among about 2,000 Rohingya held in 24 immigration
detention centers across ailand, according to the ai government.
“To be honest, we really don’t know what to do with them,” said one
immigration ocial who declined to be named. Myanmar has rejected a
ai request to repatriate them.
Dozens of Rohingya have escaped detention centers. e ai
smuggler said some immigration ocials will free Rohingya for a price.
ailand’s Foreign Ministry denied immigration ocials take payments
from smugglers.
PROMISED LAND
When Rahim, Abdul Hamid and the other Rohingya nally arrived in ailand, smugglers met them in Satun
province, which borders Malaysia.
ey were herded into pickup trucks and driven to a farm, where they say they saw the smugglers negotiate
with ai police and immigration ocials. e smugglers told them to contact relatives in Malaysia who could
pay the roughly 6,000 ringgit ($1,800).
“If you run away, the police and immigration will bring you back to us. We paid them to do that,” the most
senior smuggler told them, the two men recalled.
After 22 days at the farm, Rahim and Hamid escaped. It was near midnight when they darted across a eld,
cleared a barbed-wire fence and ran into the jungle. ey wandered for a day, hungry and lost, before meeting a
Burmese man who found them work on a fruit farm in Padang Besar near the ai-Malaysia border. ey still
work there today, hoping to save enough money to leave ailand.
If the smugglers get paid, they usually take the Rohingya across southern ailand in pickup trucks, 16 at a
time, with just enough space to breathe, the smuggler in ailand said. ey are hidden under containers of sh,
shrimp or other food, and sent through police checkpoints at 1,000 baht ($32) apiece, the smuggler said. Once
close to Malaysia, the nal crossing of the border is usually made by foot.
Abdul Rahim, the shopkeeper who lost his wife and toddler, arranged a quick payment to the smugglers
28,000
The number of Rohingya
Myanmar refugees registered
with the UNHCR in Malaysia.
Source: UNHCR
THE WAR ON THE ROHINGYAS AUTHORITIES IMPLICATED IN ROHINGYA SMUGGLING NETWORKS
PULITZER PRIZE ENTRY INTERNATIONAL REPORTING 11
from relatives in Kuala Lumpur. He was soon on a boat to Malaysia with his surviving daughter and his sister-
in-law, Ruksana. ey were dropped o around April 20 at a remote spot in Malaysia’s northern Penang island.
For Abdul Rahim and many other Rohingya, Malaysia was the promised land. For most, that hope fades
quickly.
At best, they can register with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and receive a card that
gives them minimal legal protection and a chance for a low-paid job such as construction. While Malaysia has
won praise for accepting Rohingya refugees, it has not signed the U.N. Refugee Convention that would oblige it
to give them fuller rights.
ose picked up by Malaysian authorities face weeks or months in packed detention camps, where several
witnesses said beatings and insucient food were common. e Malaysian government did not comment on
conditions in the camps.
e UNHCR has registered 28,000 Rohingya asylum seekers out of nearly 95,000 Myanmar refugees in
Malaysia, many of whom have been in the country for years. An estimated 49,000 unregistered asylum seekers
can wait months or years for a coveted UNHCR card. e card gives asylum seekers discounted treatment at
public hospitals, is recognized by many employers, and gives protection against repatriation.
e vast majority, like Sabur, Abdul Rahim and their families, don’t obtain these minimal protections. ey
evade detention in the camps but live in fear of arrest.
By early July, Sabur had found temporary work in an iron foundry on Kuala Lumpur’s outskirts earning
about $10 a day. He will likely have to save for years to pay back the money that secured his release.
Abdul Rahim’s family now lives in a small, windowless room in a city suburb. His late wife’s sister, Ruksana,
coughed up blood during one interview, but is afraid to seek medical help without documentation.
By early July, Abdul Rahim had married Ruksana. He was picking up occasional odd jobs through friends
but was struggling to pay the $80 a month rent on their shabby room. Despite that, and the loss of his rst wife
and daughter, he still believes he made the right decision to ee Myanmar.
“I don’t regret coming,” he said, “but I regret what happened. I think about my wife and daughter all day.”
(Stuart Grudgings reported from Kuala Lumpur. Additional reporting by Amy Sawitta Lefevre in Bangkok and
Sruthi Gottipati in New Delhi. Editing by Bill Tarrant and Michael Williams)
