Family of missing Rohingya footballer fear he is among 500 believed dead in Myanmar shipwrecks | Global development

Fear could be felt as he spoke, recorded messages to his family, and asked for prayers. After pressing send, 24-year-old Shiraz Ullah boarded a boat that he hoped would save him from the violence and persecution that surrounded him back home in Myanmar.

Instead, Siraz is among 500 Rohingya refugees lost at sea after setting out for Malaysia in late June.

“Please pray for me and all the passengers. We are risking our lives but there is nothing else we can do,” he said in his voicemail. “I can’t stand this life.”

Siraz hoped that he could realize his dream of playing professional football in Malaysia. However, it is feared that the boat will disappear after a month.

Siraz’s final message showed that he was aware of the dangers of the journey that thousands of Rohingya have undertaken this year; In April, 250 Rohingya died when a boat capsized in the Andaman Sea.

Decades of persecution and military violence presumably 550,000 Rohingya remain in Myanmar – from a population thought to be around 1.4 million a decade ago. more than 1 million Rohingya people are currently living as refugees in Bangladesh and living in camps with intense security measures.

Criminals lure Rohingya from both places with the promise of a better life in Malaysia, often subjecting people to harassment and extortion before shoving them onto boats ill-equipped for rough seas.

According to Shiraz’s nephew, Mumtaz Ullah, the last time anyone from the family spoke to him was on June 22. It was around that time that a boat tried to leave for the first time but had to turn back and set out again a few days later.

“We don’t know if he is alive or not. Like others, we live in fear and uncertainty,” he said. “It feels like we’re falling apart.”

There have been rumors in recent days that the boat may have been hijacked by rival traders, but there has been no further news.

Apparently Siraz was on one of the two boats the UN believes Capsized off the coast of MyanmarIt carries 250 and 280 people respectively.

He traveled voluntarily but was not given permission by his organizations to speak to the media, a human rights investigator told the Guardian that other families said their relatives were kidnapped from parts of Myanmar and Bangladesh and held in detention camps until their families agreed to pay ransoms to traffickers.

Since the early 2000s, a vast criminal network has operated between the Bay of Bengal and Malaysia, taking advantage of the Rohingya’s desire to escape conditions in Myanmar and Bangladesh.

The predominantly Muslim minority group was stripped of citizenship by Myanmar in 1982 and has faced multiple deportations, mostly to Bangladesh. Once there, Rohingyas face movement restrictions and have limited access to work or education.

Ullah first left Myanmar in 2017, when a military campaign of violence drove 700,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh. He lived there with his nephew Mümtaz.

“We studied together, we played together. We were more like brothers than uncle and nephew,” says Mumtaz. “His biggest dream since his childhood was to become a professional football player. He held on to this dream despite all the difficulties we faced.”

Siraz won accolades as a football player, playing as a forward for Rohingya teams, but struggled to pursue his passion in refugee camps in Bangladesh, where there was little space for matches.

It first tried to reach Malaysia in 2022. The boat was caught in a storm and its passengers fell into the hands of Myanmar authorities, who routinely imprison Rohingyas who leave their villages without permission.

His family had to pay 2.9 million Myanmar kyats (£1,000) for his release.

Conditions in Myanmar have deteriorated again in the last 24 months. More than 150,000 Rohingya come to Bangladesh Due to clashes between the Myanmar army and the Arakan Army, a rebel group of Rakhine ethnicity.

Both parties were blamed killing Rohingyas and forces them to work and fight.

For young men like Shiraz, the risk of crossing the sea may seem like the only option.

“We begged him not to go because we knew how dangerous it was, but he believed he had no choice. This is not just Siraz’s story, but the story of many other Rohingya families,” Mumtaz said. “We still hope that Shiraz is alive, we pray that he can return home one day.”