Rohingya refugees return to the sea

IN RECENT WEEKS wooden boats from Bangladesh have been turning up off Aceh, the Indonesian province on the tip of Sumatra, 1,000 nautical miles (1,852km) away. They are packed with Rohingya refugees, previously resident in the Kutupalong camp complex in south-eastern Bangladesh. A Muslim people from Rakhine state in Myanmar, the Rohingyas have long been persecuted by that country’s Buddhist elite. In 2017 about 750,000 fled into Bangladesh, carrying genocidal tales of arson, rape and murder. Today Kutupalong is the world’s biggest refugee camp, with nearly 1m residents. Yet having fled from Myanmar, many are now attempting to flee from Kutupalong—a measure of desperation in the face of dwindling food rations and mounting gang violence there.