Arakan News Agency
Escaping violence and persecution in their homeland, thousands of Rohingya Muslim women face exploitation in forced marriages in Thailand and Malaysia after enduring distressful boat journeys.
“I was allowed to call my parents, and they said that if I was willing, it would be better for all the family,” Shahidah Yunus, a Rohingya refuge, told the New York Times on Sunday, August 2.
“I understood what I must do.”
The 22-year-old Rohingya refugee was speaking about her ill-fated journey to southern Thailand where she stayed two months until she was offered a marriage deal as a price to be smuggled to Malaysia.
After accepting the deal, Yunus became one of hundreds of Rohingya women sold into marriage to Rohingya men in Malaysia who pay for smugglers.
Not all women are asked before marriage deals, some are tricked or even coerced.
“I chose to marry my husband because the smugglers needed money to release me,” Yunus said.
“We were afraid of rape. It is better to marry a Rohingya man who can take care of us.”
According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the number of Rohingya women who are being forced into arranged marriage increases is estimated by thousands.
A surge of maritime migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar this year brought an increase in “abductions and marriages arranged without the consent of women whose passage was ultimately paid for by prospective husbands,” the commissioner said.
Meanwhile, Matthew Smith, the executive director of Fortify Rights, an advocacy group in Bangkok that monitors Rohingya refugees said: “Hundreds, if not thousands, of women and girls have been forced, sold or arranged for marriage via these trafficking corridors since 2012.
“For some families, it’s viewed as an imperative, as a survival mechanism.
“The trafficking gangs are treating this as a rather lucrative business,” he said, adding that for the women and girls, “being sold or forced into marriage is the least-worst outcome, and that’s a problem.”
Misleading Promises
Taking the risky journeys under pressure from parents, Rohingya women are lured on by smugglers’ rosy promises about the cost of the voyage and the good life that awaits them in Malaysia, according to experts.
“They don’t care about anything,” one 15-year-old girl said of her traffickers, according to notes provided by Smith of Fortify Rights.
“If someone pays money, we would have to go to them.”
Facing misleading promises, some women may end up trapped in abusive relations. In many cases, the husbands turn out to be older and poorer than expected.
“Even though he is too old for me, my mother agreed to the marriage,” Ambiya Khatu, 21, married a man in Malaysia who paid $1,050 for her release from smugglers in Thailand.
“There was nobody to rescue us, so I agreed.”
After rescuing her, the husband told Khatu “If you don’t want to marry me, you can simply pay back my money which I spent on you.”
That was impossible for her. “I don’t know the language, so how will I work to pay him?” she said.
“Also, we don’t have any relatives here, and I don’t have any legal documentation, so there was no option for me except marriage.”
Susan Kneebone, a professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne in Australia who is studying forced migration and marriage in Southeast Asia, says: “The idea of trafficking is really one of whether there has been an abuse of power.
“These women actually don’t have that much freedom within their own community, I suspect, and that’s all made much worse by the fact that they’re traveling to another country.”
Described by the UN as one of the world’s most persecuted minorities, Rohingya Muslims are facing a catalogue of discrimination in their homeland.
They have been denied citizenship rights since an amendment to the citizenship laws in 1982 and are treated as illegal immigrants in their own home.
Rights groups have accused the Burmese security forces of killing, raping and arresting Rohingyas following the sectarian violence last year.
Between 2012 and 2013, Buddhists mob attacks have left hundreds of Rohingya Muslims killed and evacuated more than 140,000 from their homes.
The violence has displaced nearly 29,000 people, more than 97 % of whom are Rohingya Muslims, according to the United Nations.
SOURCE : onislam
