Law enforcement misses the point
Regional governments have responded with intensified law enforcement, particularly in Aceh, where arrests of alleged smugglers have surged over the past three years. But the targets are overwhelmingly the “hired hands” – fishermen who brought rescued refugees ashore, or locals facilitating short segments of longer journeys. These individuals have little connection to the logistics of operations spanning Bangladesh to Malaysia.
The architects of these networks remain untouched, and the structural conditions that sustain the trade – including persecution in Myanmar, warehouse camps in Bangladesh and Thailand, pushbacks at sea, detention in Malaysia – remain unaddressed.
Law enforcement that targets the bottom of the chain while ignoring the root causes is window dressing at best and pure theatre at worst.
Thus, the business of transporting Rohingya across the Andaman Sea has not diminished. It has adapted, becoming more clandestine, more dangerous, and once again entangled with the jungle camps and extortion networks that produced the torture camps and mass graves of Wang Kelian. Regional states may prefer not to see what is happening, but wilful blindness does not make the boats disappear.