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Stateless Rohingya Refugees Sucked Into Booming Bangladesh Drug Trade
Rohingya Muslim refugee Ali Hasan is desperately looking for a bride for his 14-year-old son, jailed last year in Bangladesh for carrying the popular drug ya ba. He hopes the girl's family would pay the $620 needed for Mohammed Hasan's bail as dowry.
Police arrested Mohammed with 5,000 pills of ya ba, as methamphetamine is widely known in Asia, last June. His elder brother, Izzat Ali, was arrested a few months later with 200 pills and sent to prison.
Bangladesh says the influx of Rohingya fleeing Buddhist-majority Myanmar is partly to blame for soaring methamphetamine use in its cities. But many Rohingya say their young people are being pushed into crime because they cannot legally work or, in many cases, access aid.
Ali Hasan fled Myanmar three decades ago and his sons grew up in an unofficial camp in Leda, a 15-minute drive from the Naf river separating Bangladesh from Myanmar.
It is not uncommon for Rohingya families to arrange marriages while the couple are still in their mid-teens, and the 60-year-old does not think the fact Mohammed is in jail awaiting trial will be an issue, so common have such brushes with the law become among the refugees…
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