Arakan News Agency
The death of a young man was seen by the young Rohingya Muslim Abdul Salam as he received the worst forms of torture in cages inside a forest from the gangs of human traffickers, as he witnessed the horrific sexual exploitation of his fellow Muslim Rohingyas.
It was not easy for young Abdul Salam, who had to flee his homeland in Arakan, western Myanmar, leaving his parents and sisters behind.
He had no choice but to live under the weight and cruel treatment of the Myanmar soldiers, to run through the boats of human traffickers and to face another cruel life at the hands of those who saw it as a commodity sold and bought.
He told Arakan new agency correspondent when he met them in a neighborhood in Thailand where he had been working for the Khadema family for three years and was trying to stay as long as he could in her home for fear of falling into the hands of the Thai authorities and deporting him to Myanmar.
“We were living a life of death in Arakan. The Buddhists consider us immigrant aliens – although all my ancestors are from Arakan – and they treat us with excessive racism, and the Myanmar authorities deprived us of the right to education and treatment and wanted us to leave our land or be their slaves,”
“I knew there are secret trafficking groups working with the army and the border guards,” said Abdel Salam. “I got into one of these ships after I paid everything I have, and here began a journey of severe punishment.”
“People were beating us hard and depriving us of eating. We spent days without water until some of us died. They were deliberately starving us so that we would not resist them, and whoever asked for water with thirst or a little rice would be beaten to a point of unconsciousness.
On the Thai border, then we thought that our torment was over; thus, we did not know that we entered a new tunnel darker than the first”.
Then the traffickers took them to distant areas of the forest until they were brought to cages, where they were subjected to the most severe forms of tortures to force them to pay ransom. “They threw us and practiced all sorts of blackmail to ask for money in exchange for our release. They tortured us daily and forced us to contact our brothers to get us out of their hands.”
“There were many people in front of my eyes, those blatantly exploited the Rohingya women.”
Abdel Salam tells his story to the Rohingyas, who are forced to leave their country because of religious and ethnic persecution. He says he is now a homeless man in Thailand looking for himself and his stolen identity.
