Rubina, who just lately turned 15, mentioned the perpetrator was a “much older” man with two wives and youngsters, and was additionally a commander of a Rohingya militant group.

“He had been asking for my hand in marriage for months, but my parents refused because I was too young. So, he attacked me, saying he would make sure no one else in the camp would want to marry me,” Rubina mentioned.

Forced out of Myanmar ‘like dogs’, Rohingya refugees face persecution in India

Too impoverished to hurriedly prepare for the customary dowry to marry off their daughter to any Rohingya boy within the camp after the assault, the one believable step for them was handy their daughter to a dealer who agreed to assist her cross the border to succeed in India in December.

For Rohingya ladies like Rubina who’re trafficked from Bangladesh to India, the primary predators to reap the benefits of them are sometimes these from inside their very own group – trusted mates and family.

One of Rubina’s uncles paid the dealer a sum for serving to the lady attain West Bengal. He is now ready to marry her off and can ask her future husband for a bigger sum in return, justifying it as “travel expenses” in an interview with This Week in Asia.

“I do this to save girls who were sexually abused and give them a good life in India. No one would marry them back in Bangladesh,” mentioned the uncle, who didn’t wish to give his title.

He admitted “bringing” two different Rohingya ladies from Bangladesh to India during the last three years. One of them was kidnapped and repeatedly sexually assaulted after reaching India, and later “sold” for marriage to a Rohingya man in New Delhi.

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Underage Rohingya ladies compelled into abusive marriages in Malaysia

Underage Rohingya ladies compelled into abusive marriages in Malaysia

Highly susceptible

Rubina was seven when her household of 11 fled persecution from Myanmar’s Rakhine state to Bangladesh, alongside about 742,000 others of the Rohingya Muslim minority. In determined search of refuge following a brutal crackdown by armed Myanmar forces, they might be part of about 200,000 different Rohingya who had already reached Bangladesh.

More than half of those refugees are women and girls, in accordance with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which has warned that they’re extremely susceptible to sexual and gender-based violence.

Sabber Kaw Min, an India-based Rohingya group chief and founder-director of the Rohingya Human Rights Initiative, mentioned after the 2023 World Food Programme ration cuts, Rohingya refugee girls and ladies in Bangladesh might barely afford meals, not to mention different requirements, together with menstrual hygiene merchandise.

“Many might wonder: how naive must Rohingya girls be, to get so easily lured by traffickers! I want them to ask themselves what life must be like for a Rohingya refugee woman, who cannot even dream of purchasing a bottle of hair oil with their allowance of US$8 per month.

“Furthermore, Rohingya women who survive sexual assault are ostracised by their own community in the Bangladesh camps. How can we blame them, then, for giving up everything in pursuit of the possibility of some normalcy, some stability, a glimmer of love?”

For the final 5 years, the Indian authorities has been making an attempt to deport Rohingya refugees again to Myanmar, describing them as unlawful immigrants and a safety risk with hyperlinks to Muslim extremist teams.

‘I feel trapped’: Rohingya girls forced into abusive marriages in Malaysia

Ujjaini Chatterji, a Delhi-based lawyer who works on problems with compelled displacement, mentioned though India was not a signatory to the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention and had no formal refugee coverage, the Rohingya in India “cannot be termed as illegal migrants at all”.

Chatterji defined that India’s residence affairs ministry issued a round in March 2019 setting out the usual working process that should be adopted in all instances of “foreigners claiming to be refugees”.

“It defines a refugee as someone who has a well-founded fear of persecution on account of factors such as race, religion and ethnic identity,” Chatterji mentioned.

Trafficked Rohingya ladies are justifiably afraid to hunt assist, Min famous, contemplating the very actual risk they face of being arrested for unlawful immigration and detained indefinitely.

Detained indefinitely

The UNHCR says there are greater than 21,000 Rohingya refugees dwelling in India, with over 500 of them being held in detention and holding centres throughout the nation, in accordance with a truth sheet launched by the refugee company in November 2022.

Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, mentioned Indian authorities had failed to guard the rights of Rohingya refugees, usually “threatening to arbitrarily detain and deport them”.

“Rohingya women and girls in the refugee camps in Bangladesh are at severe risk, both because of the humanitarian crisis and the threats of sexual assault … Hoping to head to safer shores, many of them fall prey to people smugglers,” she mentioned.

India must probe arrests of Rohingya Muslims, cease crackdown: rights group

Hamida Khatoon, 21, is one such sufferer. Trafficked to India from Bangladesh’s Kutupalong refugee camp by a dealer in December 2022 beneath the pretext of “marriage to a good man”, she was arrested the following month within the Indian state of West Bengal.

She has been dwelling in a authorities shelter for minor ladies in a West Bengal village ever since.

Chatterji, who argues in opposition to the indefinite detention of Rohingya refugees in India, mentioned many Rohingya remained in these kids’s shelters even after they turned 18.

“Therefore, in the absence of any formal charges against them or a defined punishment term, Rohingyas in these shelter homes are often detained indefinitely – violating the Indian constitution,” she mentioned.

Hamida is allowed to talk to her mother and father on the telephone for about 10 to fifteen minutes each fortnight, in accordance with her father Shamin Rahman, who’s in Cox’s Bazar.

“She cries profusely over the call, saying that she is miserable there. Being a poor refugee, I begin crying too because I can never answer her when she asks me when she can come back home. It agonises me deeply, to not be able to reassure her even though I am her father,” mentioned Rahman, 50.

Chatterji mentioned the shelters didn’t have ample psychological well being sources, “especially for those suffering from such aggravated trauma of being trafficked”.

A former senior official of the West Bengal Commission for Protection of Child Rights (WBCPCR), the state authorities’s panel answerable for stopping the violation and abuse of kid rights in West Bengal, informed This Week in Asia that the fee handled all kids beneath their care equally, together with the Rohingya refugees.

“We [WBCPCR] even went to the Supreme Court, the apex court of India, to demand the protection of Rohingya children’s rights … but our request went in vain,” the official mentioned on situation of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the problem.

A father’s enchantment

Although a reunion with their solely daughter looks as if a distant fantasy, Hamida’s mother and father and two brothers haven’t given up hope, with a number of activists and rights teams advocating for his or her trigger.

It is a cold afternoon in Cox’s Bazar, however Hamida’s father’s face grows heat with tears as he seems at a photograph of his daughter’s UNHCR refugee identification card on his small cell phone – certainly one of few tangible pictures he has of her.

“We cannot sleep or eat whenever we think of her. All we do is pray to be able to meet our dear daughter again,” Rahman mentioned.

“We request the international community and the Indian government to reunite all Rohingya parents like me with their children who have been kept away from us.

“Please help all the Rohingya daughters who have been taken away from us in the name of a better life come back home – this is a father’s appeal.”

*Names of all of the Rohingya refugees on this story have been modified to guard their identities

Additional reporting by Mohammed Rezuwan Khan in Cox’s Bazar