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Conflict and chaos in Myanmar’s Rakhine State have escalated the risks faced by Bangladeshis who are trying to eke out a living along the maritime border.
By MATTHEW BRUNWASSER | FRONTIER
The six boats were fishing last month in Bangladeshi waters, close to the maritime boundary in the Bay of Bengal, when a Myanmar warship appeared about a kilometre away.
Fearful of the Myanmar navy’s reputation for violence and aggression – including several recent attacks on Bangladeshi fishing boats – they immediately withdrew their nets and began motoring back towards the Teknaf peninsula.
But it was too late.
“Suddenly a black speedboat appeared out of nowhere, coming toward us. Two men were shooting,” said Nur Hamid, 38, who was piloting one of the traditional wooden “moon” boats, known as nouka in Bangla.
The assailants had fired without issuing a warning; no siren, air horn or loudspeaker to announce their presence. When Hamid stopped the motor, he saw that one man on his boat was dead and two others were wounded.
The men who boarded his boat wore Myanmar navy uniforms and spoke Burmese but were not especially rough when they tied the fishermen up. “They didn’t even talk to us,” Hamid recalled. At this point, he worriedly recalled that a friend’s fishing boat had been seized by the Myanmar navy in November 2023 and never returned.
This time, though, the outcome was different. The navy personnel tied the six fishing boats together and tethered them to a warship for about a day but then released them without explanation.
They did however carry away their catch from the last three days: baskets holding about 250 kilogrammes of fish, worth about 100,000 Bangladeshi takas (US$825) – a painful financial loss.
“We are poor and earn a living only from fishing. We have no other income,” Hamid said.
Black and grey
Industry sources, experts and media reports say that assaults by the Myanmar security forces on Bangladeshi fishing boats and fishermen in the maritime border area have been fairly common since at least the mid-1990s.
However, the frequency of their attacks has increased since 2017, when a Myanmar military campaign in Rakhine State forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh. That year, the Bangladesh authorities also banned fishing in the Naf River, which forms part of the border. This was ostensibly to protect fishermen from the deteriorating security situation. However, the prohibition has been openly flouted.
The Myanmar navy’s aggression is usually linked to illegal fishing and illicit or “black” trade, all of which are common in the border area. Mohammad Rubaiyat Rahman from the University of Texas, El Paso, told Frontier that demands from the Myanmar military often amount to protection money, to allow the boats to fish in Myanmar waters or move illicit cargoes. Rahman, who studies maritime security in the Bay of Bengal, said some of the money helps fund the navy’s day-to-day operations, while the rest goes to individual officers, whose official salaries are measly.
Few fishermen are able to survive through lawful activities alone, locals say. Sources told Frontier that legal and illicit goods are often mixed together in shipments, with fishing boats also ferrying migrants, drugs and other contraband.
“You’re not only one or the other,” said Abed Ahsan Sagar, a third generation fish exporter in Cox’s Bazar who is also director of the Cox’s Bazar Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “Legal or illegal doesn’t matter to such poor people.”
Sagar said a fishing boat costs about 200,000 taka (US$1,650) a day to operate, including rental, fishing gear, fuel and food. Fishermen need to catch around 500kg of fish a day just to break even; in contrast, one boat trip generates the same amount of money by ferrying about 20 people from Rakhine to Bangladesh illegally.
The biggest import – licit or illicit – from Myanmar is methamphetamine pills known as yaba. In 2022, about 44 million yaba tablets were seized in Bangladesh, according to government statistics. Around half of all seizures each year are typically from Cox’s Bazar district, which indicates the importance of the maritime route from Rakhine.
Locals say that over the past decade or so, yaba abuse has permeated Bangladeshi society, affecting public health, the local economy and even social relations. Media reports estimate that 5-7 million Bangladeshis are addicted to the drug.
“Now the trust between people is at zero,” said Mohammad Jalil, 55, who sells phones from a shop in the town of Teknaf, close to the border. “It’s impossible to find a single family unaffected [by yaba]”, he said.
The logistics involved in the massive international trade in yaba requires the participation of officials on both sides of the border – as well as powerful, wealthy well-connected businesspeople. Many Rohingya are low level dealers in Bangladesh, local sources say, while poor fishermen provide basic transport services.
There is also a flourishing “grey” economy – the informal trade in goods that are legal yet unregulated and untaxed, such as food and medicines – between Bangladesh and Myanmar. Locals claim this trade has increased as a result of recent conflict in Rakhine, which has severely disrupted the movement of goods between the state and the rest of Myanmar.
Yet fishermen are always at risk – even when they’re only trying to fish. Navigating the narrow Naf River, which is only a few kilometres wide in places, can be challenging and depends on the tides, seasons and water level. At certain times of the year the river is so shallow that Bangladeshi boats must pass through a Myanmar section of the Naf to reach the Bay of Bengal.
Growing dangers
Fishermen say the longstanding threat to their safety from the Myanmar military has escalated even further in recent months, as the regime comes under heavy attack from the Arakan Army, a powerful ethnic armed group. In November last year, the AA launched offensives against Myanmar military positions across Rakhine as well as in neighbouring southern Chin State, with fighting raging for more than a year.
The AA has so far seized 11 townships and also now controls large parts of Maungdaw Township, which marks much of the border with Bangladesh. For months, regime troops and some allied Rohingya fighters have been holding out at Border Guard Police Battalion 5, near Maungdaw town. To help the beleaguered defenders, the military has moved warships up to the Naf River estuary, from where it has been bombarding AA forces laying siege to the BGP base.
The armed group has allegedly “abducted” Bangladeshi fishermen several times this year; in one incident in early November, the AA reportedly detained 20 fishermen before handing them back to Border Guard Bangladesh three days later. In another case, the AA was reported to have rescued and returned a group of Bangladeshi fishermen who had been attacked by “miscreants and robbers” and set adrift in Myanmar waters.
For both the Myanmar military and the AA, detaining Bangladeshi fishermen appears to be a means of demonstrating their control over Rakhine’s border areas.
“It is essential for the Myanmar junta to demonstrate that they have power, not the AA, so that they are the only party with the authority to negotiate in any international talks,” Rahman told Frontier in an email.
In the background is the question of who Dhaka might engage to discuss repatriation of the Rohingya. While the AA controls most of the border area, including the locations from where the Rohingya fled, Bangladesh has remained wedded to its policy from before Myanmar’s 2021 coup of discussing repatriation with Nay Pyi Taw.
Justice and accountability
The fisherman killed in the October 9 incident, Osman Gani, 60, lived in a village near the Naf where most of the simple huts are made of wood and bamboo and lack electricity or running water. The dirt paths between the houses are lined by corrugated tin walls.
His widow, Hasim Begum, 35, said she didn’t know why her husband was killed, but was now worried for her family’s future. “I have a daughter who needs to be married and three young sons to feed. I don’t know how I will make ends meet,” she said, as one of her sons fidgeted on her lap.
She said she was upset that no Bangladeshi officials have contacted her since the incident. “I want justice,” she said, fighting back a sob. “And then I want compensation.”
But the Bangladesh government appears more concerned about the future of the Rohingya refugees within its borders. Around 1 million are living in overcrowded camps in the Kutupalong area south of Cox’s Bazar, just a few kilometres from Rakhine. The longer the refugees have stayed, the more pushback they have faced from local communities.
“The huge influx has impacted our economy,” said a senior Bangladeshi border official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not have permission to talk to a reporter. “They are competing for jobs and undercutting wages for our day laborers and rickshaw drivers.”
Asked about the perceived lack of response to the Myanmar navy’s attacks on Bangladeshi civilians, the official insisted that “you will not find another border guard more humane than ours”, adding that they were “very cautious and careful”.
But Bangladesh’s foreign policy principle of “friendship towards all, malice towards none” is also drawing criticism. In response to the October assault, the Bangladesh foreign ministry sent a diplomatic note, which it posted on its Facebook page, urging Myanmar “to take immediate steps to prevent the recurrence of such unwarranted actions. Myanmar is reminded to fully respect the integrity of Bangladesh’s territorial waters and refrain from any further provocations.”
One user commented: “Keep sending them only diplomatic messages and they’ll continue gifting us more dead bodies.”
Another asked: “Why aren’t we demanding that the perpetrators be brought to justice?”
Sagar, the fish exporter and chamber official, expressed frustration at what he said was the government’s failure to ensure the safety of fishermen, claiming Dhaka’s inaction was putting economically vital industries such as fishing at risk.
“They do nothing,” Sagar said, shaking his head.