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As desperation grows in the squalid camps housing a million Rohingya refugees, networks of long dormant – and often deadly – traffickers are reborn, Bangladeshi officials warned.
Smugglers working in rickety fishing boats feed on the hopes of people who have fled the violence in Myanmar, inflicting a small fortune on a dangerous journey in Southeast Asia, offering a promise in the air of 39, a new beginning.
The first ship to leave Bangladesh to visit Malaysia since the end of the monsoon was intercepted by law enforcement, who warned that others would follow.
Many of the Rohingya ghosts in the Cox Bazaar have come to feel that they have no choice but to try to escape, community leaders and aid workers said.
An agreement to safely return persecuted Muslims to Myanmar has failed, condemning them to limbo and deprivation in foul camps where they are forbidden to leave or looking for work to improve their lot.
Sensing a surge, Coast Guard patrols have intensified since the discovery of the first ship in November in Bay of Bengal, said Ikbal Hossain, deputy police chief of Cox's Bazar.
Another shipment of refugees fleeing a camp in Myanmar was found off the southern coast of the country in November after 15 days at sea as part of an unsuccessful attempt to reach Malaysia.
"As the sea becomes calm again, smuggling has resumed, but we have zero tolerance for human trafficking," Hossain told AFP.
He added, however, that traffickers were hard to detect in the teeming hills where more than 720,000 Rohingya took refuge after a brutal crackdown on the Burmese army in August 2017.
– Terrifying journey –
Shabeda Begum, a 30-year-old widow under what UN investigators have called ethnic cleansing, said she had been approached by another refugee proposing to reunite her with a beautiful sister and a brother-in-law in Malaysia.
The Muslim-majority nation is home to one of the largest overseas Rohingya communities, many of whom arrived by boat from the Cox Bazaar until the closure of this smuggling pipeline in 2015.
Begum was introduced to a Bangladeshi provider in the coastal city of Teknaf and organized to obtain the $ 120 required from the family in Kuala Lumpur.
This secured Begum and his two children a place on the crescent-shaped fishing boat cluttered with 33 other refugees above and below the bridge.
"They promised that my life would change if I arrived there with my children," she told AFP in a slum with a plastic roof.
His seven-year-old son, Mohammad Riaz, recounted his terror as the crumbling boat was tossed in the rough seas.
"I was scared because the boat was bouncing off the waves, I thought I would fall into the sea and fall into the sea," he told AFP.
Six traffickers were arrested in connection with the failure of the trip, police said.
One of them told AFP that the fishing trawler was to transfer the Rohingya to a larger vessel bound for Malaysia at sea.
– False promises –
At its peak, transnational smugglers' networks took the refugees by boat before arriving in Thailand and transporting them by land to secret camps in Malaysia.
This road collapsed in May 2015 when shallow graves were found in migrant camps along the Thai-Malaysian border.
As authorities shut down, traffickers abandoned their boats in the Andaman Sea, leaving hungry and dehydrated passengers drifting south.
Nobody knows exactly how many people died in transit camps or at sea.
Local authorities fear another exodus, as traffickers take up their old tricks to lure vulnerable refugees onto ships.
Mosammat Khadiza, a 16-year-old refugee, said her mother had put her on board after traffickers had promised that a rich Rohingya man in Malaysia would marry him.
"We were kept in a fish refrigerator inside the hull of the boat for hours, we could not move in the confined space," she said. ; AFP.
The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, conducts awareness campaigns in the camps about the dangers of trusting smugglers and getting thin boats off the high seas.
"We recognize that the continuation of maritime movements, despite the serious dangers, illustrates the desperation of the people," said Caroline Gluck, spokesperson for UNHCR.
"Unless they believe that there are other concrete solutions to their fate, the Rohingya will continue to risk their lives on boats."
But faced with great hardships and with few prospects for a brighter future, camp leaders have stated that it would be difficult to counter the promise of a better life elsewhere.
"This is not a life that everyone would prefer," said Mohammad Osman, leader of the Rohingya community.
"That's why they jump on boats without hesitation when they approach traffickers."
Despite his first setback, Begum has vowed to try again.
"I will take care of another chance, my brother-in-law promised to take care of us if we could only reach Malaysia," she said.
