Rohingya women raped at transit camps

Nur Khaidha and her husband Nurul Amin talking about the human trafficking transit camps. - Bernama pix

ALOR SETAR: Female Rohingya migrants detained at a human trafficking transit camp in Padang Besar, Thailand, were treated like sex slaves.  

Nur Khaidha Abdul Shukur, 24, who was held for eight days with her baby at the camp, said the women were also gang-raped by camp guards. 

She said: "Every night, two or three young and pretty Rohingya women were taken out from the detention pens by the guards to a clandestine place.   

"Two young women at the camp became pregnant after the gang rape," she said to Bernama through an interpreter here. 

Nur Khaidha said there were also cases of women being taken away by the guards for several days to fulfil their lust. 

"They will go missing for two to three days after being taken by the guards. 

“I did not question them when they were returned to their pens, but I know what had happened to them. 

"We knew from their expressions," she said, adding that women who were detained were not allowed to talk among themselves or risked being beaten up. 

She also said that in the camp where she was detained last year, there were 15 Rohingya female victims, with five having small children.     

But the five women with children were not abused by the guards. 

"Maybe the guards did not rape us because we had small children.

"But I prayed everyday so that I would not become their rape victim," she said.

Nur Khaidha, who is from Maungdaw, Myanmar, resolved to cross the Andaman Sea on a boat to Malaysia with her child to follow in her husband's footsteps. 

Several months earlier, her husband, Nurul Amin Nobi Hussein, 25, had boarded a boat from Maungdaw to Ranong, Thailand, in his effort to set foot in Malaysia. 

Unknown to his wife, he was detained by a human trafficking syndicate at the transit camp in Wang Kelian, Perlis. 

Her husband was detained in the camp at Bukit Wang Burma for 22 days before he made his escape. 

Nurul Amin, who now works at a workshop in Alor Setar, said his desire for a better life made him and his family take a gamble to ride the “death” boats to Malaysia. 

He also said that Rohingya women had been raped by the guards at the transit camp in Wang Kelian. 

"In the night, several of the guards will go to the pens housing the women and take them to a nearby place. 

"We heard the shrieks and cries of the women because the place they raped them was very close to our pens, but as it was at night, we could not see what was happening," he said. 

A year on, Nurul Amin and his wife Nur Khaidha were thankful they were free of the misery of being detained at the transit camps of the human trafficking syndicates.

And they hope for a better future. - BERNAMA