Family of missing Rohingya footballer fear he is among 500 believed dead in Myanmar shipwrecks

‘I can’t tolerate this life,’ said the 24-year-old in his last voice message to his relatives. Attacked by the military, a rebel army and criminal gangs, Siraz Ullah risked all for a better future

The fear was audible as he spoke, recording a message to his family, asking for their prayers. After pressing send, 24-year-old Siraz Ullah boarded a boat he hoped could deliver him from the violence and persecution surrounding him at home in Myanmar.

Instead, Siraz is among 500 Rohingya refugees who have vanished at sea after setting sail for Malaysia in late June.

“Please pray for me and for all the passengers. We are risking our lives, but there is nothing else we can do,” he said in the voice message. “I can’t tolerate this life.”

Siraz had hoped that in Malaysia he might be able to pursue his dream of playing football professionally. But a month on, the boat is feared lost.

Siraz’s last message showed he was aware of the dangers of a journey that thousands of Rohingya have taken this year – in April, 250 Rohingya died on a boat that capsized in the Andaman Sea.

Decades of persecution and military violence have left an estimated 550,000 Rohingya remaining in Myanmar – from a population thought to be about 1.4 million a decade ago. More than 1 million Rohingya are now living as refugees in Bangladesh, confined to heavily policed camps.

Criminals have been luring Rohingya from both places with promises of better lives in Malaysia, often subjecting people to abuse and extortion before cramming them on to boats ill-equipped for rough seas.

According to Mumtaz Ullah, Siraz’s nephew, the last time anyone in the family spoke to him was on 22 June. It was around that time that a boat first attempted to leave but had to turn back, departing again a few days later.

“We don’t know whether he’s alive. Like many others, we are living in fear and uncertainty,” he said. “It feels as if we’ve been torn into pieces.”

In recent days, there have been rumours that the boat may have been hijacked by rival traffickers but there has been no other news.

It seems likely that Sirazwas on board one of two boats the UN believes capsized off the Myanmar coast, carrying 250 and 280 people respectively.

He travelled willingly but a human rights researcher, who was not cleared by their organisation to speak to media, told the Guardian that other families say their relatives were kidnapped from parts of Myanmar and Bangladesh and held in detention camps until their families agreed to pay a ransom to the traffickers.

Since the early 2000s a vast criminal network has operated between the Bay of Bengal and Malaysia, profiting from Rohingya desires to escape conditions in Myanmar and Bangladesh.

The mostly Muslim minority group was stripped of citizenship by Myanmar in 1982 and has faced several rounds of expulsion, mostly to Bangladesh. Once there, Rohingya face restrictions on their movement and have limited access to work or education.

Ullah first left Myanmar in 2017, when a military campaign of violence expelled 700,000 Rohingya to Bangladesh. He lived there with his nephew Mumtaz.

“We studied together, we played together. We were more like brothers than uncle and nephew,” says Mumtaz. “Since he was a child, his biggest dream was to become a professional football player. He held on to that dream despite all the difficulties we faced.”

Siraz won awards as a footballer, playing as a striker for Rohingya teams, but found it difficult to pursue his passion from Bangladesh’s refugee camps where there was little space for games.

He first attempted to reach Malaysia in 2022. That boat got caught in a storm and its passengers ended up in the hands of the Myanmar authorities, who routinely imprison Rohingya who leave their villages without permission.

His family had to pay 2.9m Myanmar kyat (£1,000) for his release.

Conditions in Myanmar have deteriorated again in the past 24 months, with more than 150,000 Rohingya arriving in Bangladesh because of fighting between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army, a rebel group drawn from the Rakhine ethnicity.

Both sides have been accused of killing Rohingya and forcing them into labour and fighting.

For young men like Siraz, the risk of a sea crossing can seem their only option.

“We begged him not to go because we knew how dangerous it was but he believed he had no other choice … this isn’t just the story of Siraz, it’s the story of many other Rohingya families,” said Mumtaz. “We still hope that Siraz is alive, we pray that one day he will come home.”