Who Are Responsible for the Sinking “Rohingya Boats” in the Andaman Sea

Aung Naing Lin, Opinion

Global Arakan Network November 11, 2025

The Andaman Sea has once again claimed its toll. Between November 6 and 7, a vessel carrying two to three hundred souls—estimates vary, but the desperation does not—left the shores of Bangladesh or Myanmar waters bound for Malaysia. Overcrowding forced a transfer to two smaller boats; one capsized in heaving swells, the other vanished. As of November 11, twenty-seven bodies have surfaced: thirteen along Malaysia’s coast, fourteen near Thailand. Thirteen survivors, all Rohingya with a few Bangladeshis among them, now sit in Malaysian detention, awaiting immigration verdicts. The sea, indifferent as ever, keeps its secrets.

Yet amid the grief, a chorus rises—swift, selective, and searing. Rohingya activists abroad point one finger, and one finger only, at the United League of Arakan and its armed wing, the Arakan Army (ULA/AA). They brand these local forces as the architects of exodus, the puppeteers of peril. The accusation is tidy, emotionally resonant, and dangerously incomplete. It ignores the map, the blockade, and the ledger of suffering that stretches far beyond Rakhine’s borders.

First, the origin of these voyagers remains unverified. No manifest, no embarkation log, no witness from the shore can confirm whether they fled Rakhine’s soil or Bangladesh’s camps. What is certain is this: they are not escaping political or ethnic persecution under ULA authority. The camps of Cox’s Bazar—home to nearly a million souls—have become pressure cookers. Donor fatigue has slashed rations; violence between armed factions festers; education and healthcare collapse. Malaysia, a Muslim-majority nation where kin already reside, glimmers as the last viable horizon. These are not refugees from Arakan governance; they are survivors of a humanitarian system in free fall, pushed seaward by conditions engineered far from Rakhine’s front lines.

Second, consider the naval cordon. Twenty Myanmar Navy vessels—gun-metal sentinels—patrol Arakan’s coastline in a chokehold tighter than any monsoon swell. Their mandate: interdict, deter, destroy. Artillery units in Sittwe rain shells on Pauktaw; air strikes crater Maungdaw. The junta’s blockade is not passive; it is kinetic, designed to starve resistance and civilian alike.

Dead Body Due to Boat Sinking

How, then, do frail wooden boats slip this iron curtain? The question is not rhetorical. Either the blockade is porous—undermined by corruption, complacency, or complicity—or these vessels never brushed Arakan’s shores at all. The logical vector runs from Cox’s Bazar southward, skirting the naval noose entirely. To blame local Arakan forces for failures of a regime thousands of kilometers removed is to mistake the symptom for the disease.

Third, follow the supply lines. Northern Arakan’s Muslim communities—those who remain—depend on cross-border trade with Bangladesh for rice, medicine, fuel. When Dhaka seals the frontier, as it has repeatedly, the artery clots. Markets empty. Clinics shutter. Families face a stark binary: cross into Bangladesh (where they are not wanted) or gamble on the sea. The ULA/AA does not impose these closures; it inherits their fallout. Blaming local authorities for the ripple effects of Dhaka’s policies is like faulting a downstream village for a dam burst upstream.

The true culpability is layered, not linear. The Myanmar junta ignites the fire with scorched-earth tactics, then fans the flames with naval strangulation. Bangladesh, overwhelmed yet obdurate, tightens borders and lets camps rot. Smugglers—those ghouls of the Bay of Bengal—pack human cargo into coffin-ships for profit. Malaysia detains survivors rather than offering sanctuary. International donors, their attention fractured by fresher crises, allow aid pipelines to rust. Each actor plays a part; none escapes the stage.

The Arakan Army does not traffic in illusions. It fights for sovereignty, yes—but also for a Rakhine where no community is expendable. In liberated zones, it has opened corridors for displaced families, distributed aid without creed-based rationing, and negotiated intercommual relations to spare civilian blood. It does not command the Andaman’s tides, nor does it forge the smugglers’ hulls. To saddle it with the sea’s carnage is to absolve the regime that lit the match and the neighbors who locked the doors.

The twenty-seven dead demand more than scapegoats. They demand a reckoning—with Naypyidaw’s war machine, with Dhaka’s border barricades, with a world that watches camps crumble and boats sink. Until those levers are pulled, the Andaman will keep its grim harvest. The question is not who forced these souls aboard; it is who keeps the lifeboats chained.