Prior to Sunday’s arrivals, the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR) said that 1,200 Rohingya people, a persecuted minority from Myanmar, had landed ashore in Indonesia since November.

Miftah Cut Ade, chief of the fishing community in Aceh, said that two boats landed in the province early on Sunday morning, one each in the districts of Pidie and Aceh Besar.

Each boat was carrying an estimated 200 Rohingya, he said.

Andi Susanto, a local military official, said about 180 Rohingya had landed in Pidie at 4 a.m. (2100 GMT), and that officers were coordinating in the field to collect data.

Susanto confirmed the military was aware of a second boat but did not have information of where it had landed or how many were on board.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo said in a statement on Friday that he suspects human trafficking is behind the recent escalation in boat arrivals and has promised to work with international organisations to handle the issue.

Indonesia is not a signatory to the 1951 United Nations Convention on Refugees but has a history of taking in refugees when they arrive on the country’s shores.

But the high volume of recent arrivals has prompted a backlash on social media and some pushback from people in Aceh, the westernmost region most boats land.

For years, Rohingya have left Buddhist-majority Myanmar where they are generally regarded as foreign interlopers from South Asia, denied citizenship and subjected to abuse.

When seas are calmer between November and April every year, members of the persecuted minority leave on wooden boats for neighbouring Thailand and Muslim-majority Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia.

When seas are calmer between November and April every year, members of the persecuted minority leave on wooden boats for neighbouring Thailand and Muslim-majority Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Miftah Cut Ade, chief of the fishing community in Aceh on Indonesia’s westernmost tip, told Reuters the latest group of Rohingya landed on Le Meulee beach on the island of Sabang before dawn on Saturday.

“They are mostly women and children and they are in a weak condition,” he said.

Indonesia is not a signatory to the 1951 United Nations Convention on Refugees but has a history of taking in refugees when they arrive on the country’s shores.

For years, Rohingya have left Buddhist-majority Myanmar where they are generally regarded as foreign interlopers from South Asia, denied citizenship and subjected to abuse.

Nearly a million Rohingya live in refugee camps in the Bangladeshi border district of Cox’s Bazar, most after fleeing a military-led crackdown in Myanmar in 2017.

Nearly one million members of the Muslim minority from Myanmar live in bamboo-and-plastic camps in the Bangladeshi border district of Cox’s Bazar, most after fleeing a military crackdown in Myanmar in 2017.

“A few years ago, these boats mostly carried young males,” said Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project that helps refugees, referring to small boats that set off from the Bangladesh and Myanmar coasts, usually bound for Southeast Asia.

“A large number aboard are entire families, parents with children, and sometimes extended families.”

Rohingya traditionally take to sea in October, at the end of the rainy season, on journeys fraught with danger. The boats, often over-crowded, can sink, or run out of food and water, and the Rohingya can fall into the hands of people smugglers.

Out of an estimated 1,084 Rohingya who came ashore in Indonesia’s Aceh province this month, 360 were children, 292 women and 238 men, according to U.N. refugee agency data.

Of 3,572 Rohingya who have left on 34 boats this year, 31% of them were children, data showed. About 65% of those leaving set off from Bangladesh this year, compared with 27% last year. Most of the rest leave from Myanmar.

In 2022, one of the deadliest years for the Rohingya at sea, a fifth of the about 3,705 people who fled were children.

“Children making the boat journeys was not a trend before,” said Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, Bangladesh’s refugee relief and repatriation commissioner based in Cox’s Bazar.

‘Desperate’

Rohingya have faced persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar for decades. They are generally regarded as foreign interlopers from South Asia, denied citizenship and subjected to abuse.

With little hope of settling in Bangladesh or being accepted elsewhere, they feel they have no choice but to take to sea, Rahman said.

“When an entire section becomes stateless, when they see no prospect of their repatriation or integrating into the countries they are settled in, they obviously become worried about the future of their next generation,” he said.

Aid workers say another factor contributing to more families deciding to take to sea is that conditions in the refugee camps are getting much more tough.

This year, the U.N. cut food aid to the refugees in Bangladesh by a third, to $8 per person a month because it has been able to raise less than half of the $876 million needed to support them. Many parents are skipping meals.

“You can’t even buy an egg with that,” said Rahman, referring to a meal allowance of about 9 Bangladeshi taka ($0.08) per person.

The chances of going home to Myanmar are more slim than ever. Myanmar’s military government has offered talks on repatriation but no progress has been made and insecurity is deteriorating with a growing insurgency against military rule.

“No one can think of going back right now,” said refugee Mohammed Taher in Cox’s Bazar, who knows two families that recently set off for Malaysia.

“Some people are desperate to leave by any means. They’re ready to take dangerous sea voyages knowing that they can end up dead.”

The refugees, who arrived at various parts of the province including Bireuen, Pidie and East Aceh, have overwhelmed local facilities, Munawaratul Makhya, a UNHCR official, told Reuters.

“Since their arrival early this morning, we have coordinated with local officials in Pidie region to ensure the refugees are getting their basic needs, since they have been floating for many days on the sea,” the official said.

She said the location where they were being accommodated in Pidie was overflowing with the fresh arrivals and the UNHCR was waiting for the government to provide bigger temporary shelters to house them.

Hundreds of Muslim Rohingya have arrived in Aceh province in recent days, taking the total there to more than a thousand, continuing a migration which has for several years seen Rohingyas escaping from Myanmar to Muslim-majority Bangladesh, or by rickety wooden boats to Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as Thailand.

Almost 1 million Rohingya are living in camps in Bangladesh in what U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi described as “the biggest humanitarian refugee camp in the world”.

Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry said the Southeast Asian country “has no obligation nor capacity to accommodate refugees, let alone to provide a permanent solution”.

Jakarta is not a signatory of the UN refugee convention.

Many members of the ethnic Rohingya Muslims, a persecuted minority in Myanmar, have for years boarded rickety wooden boats to escape to Muslim-majority Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as Thailand.

The latest group of Rohingya refugees landed in Aceh’s Bireun region in the afternoon and comprised mostly of women and children, the head of local fishing community Miftah Cut Ade told Reuters.

Photos he shared appeared to show the Rohingya sitting huddling on the beach, facing the sea.

Up to 200 Rohingya landed in Aceh’s Pidie region on Wednesday and a day before that, 196 others arrived. Miftah said based on the Rohingya’s account, they had departed from Bangladesh.

Hundreds more had reached Aceh earlier this year, many having been at sea for months.

Nearly one million Rohingya are living in camps in Bangladesh in what U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi described as “the biggest humanitarian refugee camp in the world”.

Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry said the Southeast Asian country “has no obligation nor capacity to accommodate refugees, let alone to provide permanent solution”, underscoring that Jakarta is not a signatory of the UN refugee convention.

“We have also identified that Indonesia’s kindness in providing temporary shelter has been misused by people smugglers,” the ministry’s spokesperson, Lalu Muhamad Iqbal, said in a statement.

The recent arrivals come as Myanmar’s generals face their biggest test since seizing power in a 2021 coup, with insurgent groups gaining ground in several parts of the country in a coordinated offensive against the junta.

Nearly one million Rohingya Muslims fled a military-led crackdown in Buddhist-majority Myanmar in 2017 and are now living in camps in Bangladesh in what U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi described as “the biggest humanitarian refugee camp in the world”.

The U.N. has managed to secure only 42% of the $875.9 million needed for the Rohingya refugee this year which makes short term support for the refugee population in the camps difficult, Grandi told Reuters in an interview.

“This decline in humanitarian assistance makes it more difficult to continuously, for example, renew the shelters,” Grandi said.

“You have to invest money all the time and that money is becoming short, so conditions are now beginning to regress,” he said.

Grandi was in Bangkok on Tuesday to host a meeting with high level officials in the region on the Rohingya issue, seeking pledges and support from governments and the private sector ahead of the Global Refugee Forum in December.

Grandi praised Bangladesh for “miraculous” works in maintaining the Rohingya camps, allowing education for the Rohingya children, and said that the United Nations is currently discussing with Bangladesh on allowing refugees to work to support their livelihood in the camps.

Improvements to the humanitarian situation in Myanmar, particularly on improving relations between Buddhist and Muslim communities and economic development, are essential to ensure a safe return for the Rohingya to their home, Grandi said.

Myanmar has been under military rule since a 2021 coup and the junta have shown little inclination to take back any Rohingya, who have for years been regarded as foreign interlopers in Myanmar, denied citizenship and subjected to abuse.

The Myanmar coup has also triggered conflict with a resistance movement and armed ethnic groups across the country, displacing more than a million people, the U.N. said.

Myanmar junta spokesman did not answer calls from Reuters seeking comment.

UNHCR high commissioner said Myanmar’s neighbouring countries can do more to press the military government on humanitarian concerns.

“They are the best place to pass messages and to ensure that the humanitarian concerns are heard,” he

The members of the Muslim Rohingya community were detained in six town and cities in the state and 10 of the refugees were juveniles, police said, without giving ages.

The Rohingya Human Rights Initiative campaign group said the detained people had been living in the area for about 10 years after fleeing persecution in Myanmar.

Many had been doing manual labour including rubbish collection, Initiative director Sabber Kyaw Min said. “They have been only demanding refuge,” he added. “The community is requesting … an end to detentions.”

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled Myanmar to countries including Bangladesh, which borders India. Myanmar’s military denies committing crimes against humanity.

New Delhi has not signed the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention, which spells out refugee rights and states’ responsibilities to protect them, nor does it have its own laws protecting refugees.

Around 18,000 Rohingya lived in India as of early last year, according to Rohingya Human Rights Initiative co-founder Ali Johar.

More than a million Rohingya have been crammed into the camps in southeastern Bangladesh, the world’s largest refugee settlement. Most fled the crackdown by Myanmar’s military almost six years ago, although some have been there for longer.

During Thursday’s demonstrations across the sprawling camps, refugees, young and old, waved placards and chanted slogans.

“No more refugee life. No verification. No scrutiny. No interview. We want quick repatriation through UNHCR data card. We want to go back to our motherland,” the placards read. “Let’s go back to Myanmar. Don’t try to stop repatriation.”

Surging crime, harsh living conditions and bleak prospects for returning to Myanmar are driving more Rohingya refugees to leave Bangladesh by boat for countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, putting their lives at risk. U.N. data shows 348 Rohingya are thought to have died at sea last year.

Rohingya community leader Mohammad Jashim said he was keen to return to Myanmar but wanted his citizenship rights guaranteed.

“We are the citizens of Myanmar by birth. We want to go back home with all our rights, including citizenship, free movement, livelihood, safety, and security,” he told Reuters, saying the refugees hoped for United Nations’ help in this regard.

Myanmar’s military had until recently shown little inclination to take back any Rohingya, who have for years been regarded as foreign interlopers in Myanmar and denied citizenship and subjected to abuse.

Attempts to begin repatriation in 2018 and 2019 failed as the refugees, fearing prosecution, refused to go back.

A group of 20 Rohingya Muslims told Reuters they would not return to Myanmar to “be confined in camps” after visiting their homeland as part of a pilot scheme aimed at encouraging voluntary repatriation. A Bangladesh official said the pilot scheme envisaged about 1,100 refugees returning to Myanmar, but no date had been set.

Densely populated Bangladesh says refugees’ repatriation to Myanmar is the only solution to the crisis. Local communities have been increasingly hostile towards the Rohingya as international aid agencies’ funding for the refugees has dwindled.

The World Food Programme recently cut the monthly food allocation to $8 per person from $10 earlier.

“Our situation is only deteriorating. What future do we have here?” asked refugee Mohammed Taher, as he stood with other protesters.

“In the name of verification and scrutiny, they (Myanmar) are only killing time.”

Teknaf (AP) — 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!”

On the other end of the line, hundreds of miles away in Malaysia, was her husband, Muhammed Rashid, who picked up the phone at 10:59 p.m. his time on Dec. 7, 2022. He had not seen his family in 11 years. And he had only learned days earlier that Setera and two of their daughters had fled surging violence in Bangladesh’s camps for ethnic Rohingya refugees.

Now, Rashid feared, his family’s frantic bid to escape would cost them the very thing they were trying to save — their lives. For despite Setera’s pleas, no help would come, not for her or for the babies, the 3-year-old afraid of the sea or the pregnant women also on board.

Rashid listened to his wife’s terrified voice with growing dread.

“Oh Allah, it’s sunk by the waves!” Setera cried. “It’s sunk by the storm!”

The call disconnected.

Rashid tried to call back. On board the boat, the satellite phone rang. But no one answered.

Rashid tried again. He tried more than 100 times.

The phone rang out.

___

The Rohingya are a people nobody wants.

This stateless Muslim minority has suffered decades of persecution in their homeland of Myanmar, where they have long been viewed as interlopers by the Buddhist majority. Around one million have fled across the border to Bangladesh, only to find themselves trapped for years in a squalid camp and held hostage by migration policies that have given them almost no way out.

And so, in a bid to get somewhere — anywhere — safe, they are taking to the sea.

It is a life-or-death gamble. Last year, more than 3,500 Rohingya attempted to cross the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea — a 360 percent increase over the previous year, according to United Nations figures that are almost certainly an undercount. At least 348 people died or went missing, the highest death toll since 2014.

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.

Governments ignore the Rohingya because they can. While multiple international laws mandate the rescue of vessels in distress, enforcement is difficult.

In the past, the region’s coastal nations hunted for boats in trouble — only to push them into other countries’ search and rescue zones, says Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project, which monitors the Rohingya crisis. But now, they rarely even bother to look.

The lucky ones are eventually towed to shore in Indonesia by local fishermen. Yet even rescue can be perilous — a Vietnamese oil company saved one boat, then promptly handed the Rohingya over to the same deadly regime in Myanmar from which they’d fled. And the Myanmar authorities themselves patrol for Rohingya migrants.

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.

“It was a total lack of political will and extremely heartless,” he says. “The accountability and the onus really lies on everyone.”

Several countries in the region did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The reasons the Rohingya escape are written on face after gaunt face, in haunted eyes and across slumped shoulders. Any hope that once existed in the Bangladesh camps has long since died, replaced by a stoic sadness and a palpable fear. These are a people who have come to expect nothing, and often get that or worse.

Most of the Rohingya in these camps fled what the United States has declared a genocide in Myanmar in 2017. In recent years, however, brutal killings by gangs and warring militant groups — many in broad daylight — have become commonplace.

Fires are frequent, some of them acts of arson. One afternoon in March, a blaze that investigators say was set by criminals tore through thousands of shelters. The billowing smoke was so thick and black it blocked the view of the sun. Wide-eyed children huddled together, crying, as the inferno left 15,000 homeless.

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.

And so, out of options, they do again what they have done before: They flee.

Jutting up from the dust and the dirt of Nayapara camp in Bangladesh are bamboo, tarp and tin huts jammed along labyrinthine pathways.

This tight-knit warren is Block H, home to Setera and 64 other passengers, including the boat’s captain, Jamal Hussein.

Virtually everyone in Block H was connected to the boat somehow. Many residents have spent most, or all, of their lives here, after fleeing Myanmar during earlier waves of violence. Their shelters now bake below sun-scorched mountains that are home to violent gangs.

Jamal himself was afraid for his life, says his sister, Bulbul. Inside her shadowy shelter, she weeps at the memories of her brother. “He was my heart,” she says.

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.

Their life in the camps was difficult, she says, but they managed. More recently, though, Jamal had received death threats, Bulbul says. He started making plans to get out.

He bought a boat and took a video of it to share with prospective passengers. In the video, obtained by the Associated Press, the wooden vessel sits docked in murky brown water. It appears old and shabby, with a cramped compartment below deck, and clearly too small to safely carry 180 people 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) to Indonesia, Jamal’s target.

From there, most passengers planned to make their way to their ultimate destination, Malaysia.

Though Bulbul denies it, residents of Block H say Jamal was a seasoned captain who had successfully guided several other boats of Rohingya refugees across the sea. It was his experience, they say, along with his willingness to put 16 of his own relatives on the boat — including his wife, six children, five grandchildren and two pregnant daughters-in-law— that prompted so many to trust him. One mother said Jamal promised her he would watch over her teenage son and daughter along with his children.

In a shelter a short walk from Jamal’s, Setera’s father holds up a photo of his daughter, with her full lips and wide-set eyes so much like her mother’s.

“She was the most beautiful person in our family,” says Abdu Shukkur.

Shukkur had never heard anyone say a bad word about Setera, a warm and doting mother to her own daughters. She rarely complained, despite raising her girls on her own in the misery of the camps since 2012. That’s the year her husband, Rashid, fled to Malaysia to support his family with the wages he sent from his restaurant job.

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.

Two years ago, they snatched Setera’s 4-year-old nephew and took him to the mountains, Shukkur says. They held him there for 6 days, drugging him to keep him quiet. The family eventually paid a ransom of 300,000 taka ($2,800) to get him back — a fortune in the camps.

In late November, Setera went to her father and asked his permission to go on Jamal’s boat, along with her two younger daughters, aged 18 and 15. Her eldest daughter was married and would stay behind.

Shukkur forbade her to go.

“If you want to go to Malaysia by boat, just divorce your husband,” he told her. “It’s too dangerous.”

His wife, Gul Faraz, intervened. “She’s been living without her husband here for 11 years now,” Faraz said. “Let her go.”

Shukkur relented.

Grief steals his breath as he recounts his goodbye with his granddaughters, and he pauses to calm himself. They had a habit of stealing Shukkur’s unripe guavas, plums and mangoes whenever they visited, prompting scoldings from their grandfather.

“Grandpa, you will not need to scold us anymore,” one of the girls told Shukkur. “Everything will be all right.”

Setera, angry that her father had tried to stop her, did not come to say goodbye.

In a nearby shelter, another family was in agony.

Jamal’s cousin, Muhammed Ayub, was fighting to stop his daughter, Samira, and her children, aged 6 and nine months old, from getting on the boat. But his son-in-law, Kabir Ahmed, was resolute. Villagers outside the camps had beaten him with an iron rod, and he was afraid.

“It is not safe here. People are getting killed every day,” Ahmed told his father-in-law. “If you stop me from leaving, I will not visit you anymore.”

And so, powerless, Ayub hugged his daughter and son-in-law goodbye. Then, riddled with anxiety, he wrapped his grandsons in an embrace. His entire body ached as he watched them leave.

“They were my lovely ones,” he says.

A boat carrying 180 Rohingya refugees set out from Bangladesh on December 1. One week later, the boat vanished. The Associated Press reconstructed the journey based on interviews, videos, and calls from the boat. (June 6) (AP production McKinnon de Kuyper/Marshall Ritzel/Peter Hamlin)

___

At the southernmost tip of mainland Bangladesh lies a wild, wind-swept beach, fringed to the east by forest and mountains and to the west by the Bay of Bengal. This stretch of grey sand is barren but for a few wooden fishing boats and an army of bright red crabs that hide in their holes when any human comes near.

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.

Late on the night of Dec. 1 and through around 4 a.m. the following day, many of those on Jamal’s boat called their anxious families.

It was only then that Setera told her husband she and two daughters were headed his way.

Rashid had told them countless times never to get on a boat. But this time, Setera would not be stopped. She told him she’d sold her jewelry to help pay for their passage, a total of 360,000 taka ($3,400).

Rashid was stunned. He apologized to Setera for any mistakes he’d made in their 20 years of marriage. And then, he says, he heard Jamal tell Setera to get off the phone. She hung up.

Rashid began to cry with excitement and fear. He couldn’t believe he might soon see his girls.

Setera made at least one more call, to her father, Shukkur.

“The boat is waiting for fuel,” Setera said. “We’re leaving soon, and we’ll be out of service.”

Shukkur was too angry to speak. He couldn’t believe she hadn’t even come to say goodbye. So he passed her mobile number onto his nephew in Malaysia, and told him to ring Setera and order her to come home.

Meanwhile, Jamal’s daughter-in-law, Bibi Ayesha, called her parents to say she and her family had also made it on board. Alongside Bibi was her 17-year-old brother, her husband, and her 3-year-old son, Abu.

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.

Jamal got on the phone with the parents to reassure them. “The boat is big,” Jamal said, according to the couple. “We have enough food for 15 days.”

Asma Bibi, who was married to another of Jamal’s sons, also made a call to her mother, Hasina Khatun. Eighteen-year-old Asma was 9 months pregnant, and excited to meet her child after a stillbirth with her first baby one year earlier.

Asma hadn’t wanted to go on the boat, says Hasina. But Asma’s husband did.

“How can I stay here without my husband? I’m pregnant,” Asma had told her nervous mother days earlier. “How can my child survive without a father?”

And so, Hasina gave her daughter two sets of baby clothes — one pink, and one white, since they didn’t know the baby’s gender. She also gave her daughter medicine, towels and a green blanket to wrap the newborn in after birth.

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.

At 4:04 a.m., back in Block H, Jannat Ara’s phone rang. It was her aunt, Kurshida Begum, who said she’d boarded with her husband and two sons, aged 3 and 4.

In the recorded call, shared with the AP, Kurshida recites a prayer, then asks her niece to do the same.

“The journey has begun,” Kurshida told her niece.

News of the call quickly reached Kurshida’s mother-in-law, Momina Begum, who became hysterical. She had no idea Kurshida and the boys were on the boat.

“Where are you going with these children?” Momina screamed. “Why are you crossing the dangerous sea with these children?”

But it was too late. Jamal’s boat was headed into the Bay of Bengal.

___

What happened next is best told through the eyes of the refugees on yet another boat that set out for Indonesia one day later.

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.

Not long into the journey, Kafayet spotted a boat in the distance. As they moved closer, they realized the boat was Jamal’s. And it was in trouble.

Jamal called out that his engine was having problems. He borrowed some electrical wire from Kafayet’s boat and went to work repairing the fault.

Kafayet was worried. His own niece and nephew were aboard Jamal’s vessel, which looked old and overloaded, the passengers packed in tight like animals.

But unlike Kafayet, Jamal had experience and a satellite phone. So when Jamal finished fixing the engine, he set off again, and Kafayet followed.

Four days later, the sky cracked open.

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.

The water in Kafayet’s boat began to rise, and a man on board spotted sharks. The passengers prepared themselves to die.

Through the darkness, they could see a light shining on Jamal’s boat. It was still above water.

But not for long.

Setera Begum’s final call to her husband, Muhammed Rashid, on Dec. 7, 2022.

___

The recording of Setera’s call to Rashid lasts 44 seconds.

“Oh Allah, our boat has sunk!” Setera shouts into the satellite phone. “Only half of it is still afloat! Please pray for us and tell my parents!”

“Where are you?” Rashid asks.

“We are about to reach Indonesia.”

“Indonesia?” Rashid repeats.

“Please tell me the name of the place,” Setera says to someone else on board, before replying to her husband: “Yes, it is India. Please try to send…”

“Are you in India?” Rashid asks, bewildered.

“Our boat has sunk! Our boat has sunk!”

“Who?” Rashid replies in a panic.

“Oh Allah, it’s sunk by the waves, it’s sunk by the storm!”

“Oh, is it sunk by the storm?” Rashid repeats. “Oh Allah…”

The call cut out.

Rashid began to pray.

Not even the shrieking wind could drown out the screams of Jamal’s passengers.

Kafayet could just make out the shape of Jamal’s boat as it made a sharp turn in the waves, and then flipped over. Kafayet threw empty water drums overboard in case his niece or nephew or any of the others could grab onto them.

He says he couldn’t see anyone in the water. But he could hear them screaming.

Then the screams stopped. The light on Jamal’s boat blinked out.

“I saw with my own eyes,” Kafayet says. “The boat sank.”

Within hours, the recording of Setera’s call spread through Block H. In shelter after shelter came the wails of families cracking apart.

Jamal’s cousin, Muhammed Ayub, was lying on his mat when he received the recording. As he listened, he began to howl in agony.

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.

Crouched on the floor next to him, his wife, Minara Begum, inhales the scent from their daughter Samira’s yellow dress. Then she presses a pair of 9-month-old Samir’s tiny blue shorts to her face, the fabric growing damp with her tears.

“Oh, my grandson, why did you leave?” she moans. “Where have you gone?”

Families already pushed to breaking point are now broken. One man who lost four relatives tried to kill himself.

Momina Begum, whose young grandsons were on board, feels she is burning in a fire or sinking under water. She sits next to a plastic basket of her 4-year-old grandson’s toys and searches for the will to live.

“It would be better to kill us by poison instead of taking away my family,” she says.

Hasina Khatun, whose pregnant daughter, Asma, and 13-year-old son were on the boat, now finds herself begging to hold other people’s babies. She wasn’t able to hold her daughter’s stillborn baby, either, she says through tears.

Hasina, like some others, still holds out hope her loved ones are alive. Without their bodies, they say, their deaths are difficult to accept.

One man, Muhammed Rashid, believes he sees his teenage son, Saiful, in an online photo of Rohingya refugees in Indonesia. He had it laminated.

Muhammed cradles Saiful’s backpack in his lap. He pulls down a sack of his boy’s belongings and dumps it on the bed, a strangled sob erupting from his throat. Then he tenderly kisses his son’s English book, on which Saiful had scrawled: “I love you.”

“My son is everything,” Muhammed murmurs. “We believe he is alive.”

But the only known survivors from that night were Kafayet and his passengers.

After Jamal’s boat sank, they drifted for another 10 days, their engine damaged, their food and water gone. Kafayet’s brother could not stop crying, thinking about what must have happened to their niece and nephew.

Delirious with thirst and hunger, they suddenly spotted a speed boat in the distance and frantically waved their clothes in the air. The Sri Lankan navy towed Kafayet’s boat to shore.

“Allah gave me a new life,” Kafayet says from a Colombo shelter.

His brother, Muhammed, knows how close they came to death. He hopes no one else will attempt to do what they did.

Yet back in the camps, such plans are already underway. In early March, Jamal’s sister, Bulbul, listened in horror as her 20-year-old son told her he was preparing to leave by boat.

Her heart stopped. “I will never allow you to go on this dangerous journey,” she told him. “My brother died on a boat.”

So he agreed to stay — for now. If he flees, she says, she will die of worry.

Rashid’s eyes are ringed with black, a result, he says, of crying for months for Setera and their daughters.

He accepts now that they drowned in the dark, screaming for help from a world gone deaf.

“I spent a long time here for my family. But now I’ve lost them,” he says.

“I feel I am dead.”

Teknaf (AP) — On Dec. 1, 2022, a boat carrying around 180 Rohingya refugees set out from Bangladesh, bound for Indonesia. On board were babies, pregnant women and children fleeing surging violence in Bangladesh’s refugee camps. One week later, the boat vanished.

The Associated Press has reconstructed the passengers’ journey based on dozens of interviews, audio recordings of calls from the boat, photos and videos. The AP’s reporting reveals the boat sank during a storm a week into its journey.

Human rights advocates say what happened to those on board is the latest example of political inaction and global apathy toward the Rohingya, a persecuted Muslim minority from Myanmar. At least 348 Rohingya died or went missing while attempting to cross the Bay of Bengal or Andaman Sea last year — the highest death toll since 2014, according to the UNHCR, the United Nations’ refugee agency. Yet the UNHCR says its repeated pleas to maritime authorities to rescue some of these distressed boats in recent months have been ignored.

Here are the key takeaways from AP’s investigation:

Fear And Misery Fueling The Exodus

Last year, more than 3,500 Rohingya attempted to cross the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea — a 360 percent increase over the previous year, according to United Nations figures that are almost certainly an undercount.

The reasons so many Rohingya have boarded these boats are written on face after gaunt face in Bangladesh’s squalid refugee camps, where around one million Rohingya have been living for years in sweltering, overcrowded huts.

Most of the Rohingya in these camps fled what the United States has declared a genocide in Myanmar in 2017. In recent years, however, brutal killings by gangs and warring militant groups — many in broad daylight — have become commonplace. So, too, have fires, some of them acts of arson.

Beyond the spiralling security situation is worsening 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.

Many of those aboard the boat at the heart of AP’s investigation were terrified for their lives, including its captain, Jamal Hussein. And so, out of options, they headed out into the Bay of Bengal in the hopes of ultimately reaching Malaysia, via Indonesia.

They never made it.

The Fate Of Jamal’s Boat

One week into the passengers’ journey, a storm struck the Bay of Bengal. On Dec. 7, a woman on board Jamal’s boat named Setera Begum used the vessel’s satellite phone to make a frantic call to her husband, Muhammed Rashid, who was in Malaysia.

Rashid recorded the call and shared it with the AP. In the recording, Setera — who was traveling with two of her teenage daughters — shouts: “Oh, Allah, our boat has sunk! Only half of it is still afloat! Please pray for us and tell my parents!”

Rashid asks where she is, and Setera at first says “Indonesia,” before checking with a fellow passenger and saying “India.” She then cries, “Oh Allah, it’s sunk by the waves, it’s sunk by the storm!”

Soon after, the call cuts out.

Jamal’s boat was being followed by another vessel carrying Rohingya refugees. The captain of the second boat, Kafayet Ullah, says he watched as Jamal’s boat made a sharp turn in the waves, and flipped over. Kafayet heard people screaming.

Then the screams stopped. The light on board Jamal’s boat blinked out.

No trace of the passengers has been found.

Surge In Deaths Blamed On Global Apathy

Jamal’s boat was not the only one to run into trouble in recent months. Yet time after time, the Rohingya aboard those distressed boats were abandoned by governments in the region and left to die.

In many cases, the boats had satellite phones and officials therefore knew their precise locations. But even then, the UNHCR says maritime authorities in the region repeatedly ignored its pleas to rescue some of those vessels.

Governments ignore the Rohingya because they can. While multiple international laws mandate the rescue of vessels in distress, enforcement is difficult.

In the past, the region’s coastal nations hunted for boats in trouble — only to push them into other countries’ search and rescue zones, says Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project, which monitors the Rohingya crisis. But now, they rarely even bother to look.

The lucky ones are eventually towed to shore in Indonesia by local fishermen. Yet even rescue can be perilous — a Vietnamese oil company saved one boat, then promptly handed the Rohingya over to the same deadly regime in Myanmar from which they’d fled.

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.

“It was a total lack of political will and extremely heartless,” he says. “The accountability and the onus really lies on everyone.”