The ‘impossible’ life of Myanmar’s Rohingya refugees

Forced out of Myanmar, the mostly Muslim Rohingya are struggling to find a place to call home

Aceh and Medan, Indonesia - Gura Amin spends 12 hours a day, six days a week packing boxes in a Malaysian factory.

The 22-year-old Rohingya refugee makes about 2,400 Malaysian ringgit ($510) a month, which he uses for his daily expenses and to pay off a 10,000 Malaysian ringgit ($2,123) debt to the people who brought him across the sea from Indonesia.

Four years ago, living in the sprawling and crowded refugee camps of Bangladesh, getting to Malaysia had been Amin’s dream.

He thought his life would improve if he could get to the majority-Muslim country that is already home to tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees.  “But I can’t find any good opportunities or improve my education or career. It was really my mistake [coming here],” he told Al Jazeera.

Amin's journey to Malaysia began on March 27, 2020, at the Unchiprang Camp when he boarded a small, wooden boat at a jetty known as Dock Six in the hope of finding a better life away from the camps of Cox’s Bazar where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya had fled after a brutal Myanmar military crackdown in 2017.

“I felt so sad looking at the boat because it looked very small and I wanted to cancel the trip and go back to my home in the camp,” he said later. “But then I thought that many, many people had already travelled to Malaysia by this boat, so I would also be OK.”

As they ventured out into the sea, Amin recalls the vessel being tossed around in the strong winds. The refugees, numbering about 90, according to Amin, could see nothing in the dead of night and had no idea the direction in which they were headed. While Amin often asked the smugglers where they were, he was ignored.