Refugees bet lives on boat crossings despite deadly toll

Hatemon Nesa recalled hugging her young daughter tightly as the cramped, broken-down boat they were sitting on drifted aimlessly

- By Shaikh Azizur Rahman and Rebecca Ratcliffe

They had set off on 25 November from the squalid Cox's Bazar refugee camp in Bangladesh, where they had lived since 2017, when a brutal crackdown by Myanmar's military forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee over the border.

The 27-year-old, like many other Rohingya refugees, was hoping for a better life in Malaysia. But about 10 days into the journey the boat's engine stopped working and food and water supplies began to run out.

The roughly 30 children on board would cry out in pain from thirst and hunger. She feared her daughter would not survive. At least two children died during the doomed voyage.

"When it rained a few times we all got a few drops of water to moisten our throat. Some mothers including me made our children drink seawater," Nesa said as she described the trauma of the journey from Indonesia, where she came ashore on 26 December.

Close to 400 people, mostly Rohingya, are believed to have died making journeys from Myanmar and Bangladesh across the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal in 2022, according to the UNHCR, making it one of the deadliest years at sea in almost a decade for the Rohingya. An estimated 180 people are feared dead from one boat alone that went missing in December.