The surge in Rohingya sea escapes this year is no mystery it is the direct consequence of escalating Arakan Army (AA) coercion in northern Arakan (Rakhine). As AA expands its narco-militia rule, Rohingya civilians face forced labor, land seizures, movement bans, detentions, ID confiscation, extortion, and food blockades that erase every means of survival. The sea has become the last remaining exit not by choice, but by desperation.

Across Buthidaung and Maungdaw, AA fighters impose daily labor quotas, confiscate homes on fabricated pretexts, seize livestock, and punish anyone who resists orders. Entire villages are forced into rotational labor lists; hundreds have been detained, beaten, or disappeared. Families describe a single ultimatum: “Work for AA or abandon everything.”

Since early 2024, AA has introduced mandatory household registers listing all Rohingya adults for forced labor. Missing names trigger suspicion, arrest, or abduction. Children are increasingly used as porters, trench diggers, and supply carriers an unmistakable war crime.

Food blockades in parts of Maungdaw and Buthidaung have sent rice prices beyond reach. Families sell their remaining possessions or flee. AA’s confiscation of Rohingya IDs means farming, traveling, or buying essentials now requires direct permission from armed commanders.

With land routes sealed by AA and junta checkpoints, and the Naf River heavily patrolled, the only remaining escape is the sea a lethal passage toward Malaysia and Indonesia that traffickers exploit whenever AA repression spikes. Rohingya board these boats not for opportunity, but to survive.

Rising Maritime Deaths

• 569+ Rohingya died or disappeared at sea in 2023.
• Nov 2023: nearly 200 fled after new AA labor demands; their boat capsized off Sittwe.
• Mar 2024: 58 drifted 12 days; survivors fled AA home-seizure threats.
• Dec 2022: ~180 vanished after AA forced recruitment in Maungdaw.
• Jan 2024: 75 rescued in Indonesia after escaping AA-controlled zones.
• Jun 2024: over 160 from Buthidaung drowned when their overloaded trawler sank.
• 2023–2024: Malaysia intercepted boats with passengers showing dehydration, beatings, and extortion many reporting AA had taken their homes, land, or livestock.

Each tragedy underscores a single truth: Rohingya are taking to the sea because AA leaves them no land-based path to live.

Traffickers Capitalizing on AA Brutality

Smugglers increase prices whenever AA intensifies arrests, forced labor, or property confiscations. Families sell land already seized by AA through informal brokers just to finance escape. Children now make up as much as 40% of passengers proof that whole families are fleeing coercion, not pursuing economic migration.

Every overloaded trawler, every mass drowning in the Bay of Bengal or Andaman Sea, tells the same story:
Rohingya are being pushed into the ocean by a narco-militia’s rule, forced to risk death because staying behind has become even more dangerous.

Until AA’s coercion, forced displacement, and militarized drug-funded governance are confronted, the sea will remain the last refuge for a people being violently squeezed out of their homeland.