Arakan News Agency
Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh and Myanmar must do more to protect vulnerable refugees – particularly Myanmar’s stateless Rohingya Muslims – from being victimized by human traffickers, says Fortify Rights, a U.S.-based human rights advocacy group.…
A year-long investigation by the group documented how huge numbers of Rohingya Muslims, driven from Myanmar by deprivation and state-sponsored violence, fall into the hands of traffickers, then are arrested, deported, enslaved or incarcerated in neighboring and nearby countries.
“We believe Myanmar, Bangladesh, Thailand, and Malaysia have failed to meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking as set forth in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act,” Matthew Smith, the organization’s executive director, told a panel of U.S. lawmakers in Washington on Wednesday.
The group said it interviewed hundreds of eyewitnesses and survivors of abuse at the hands of human traffickers, more than a dozen traffickers and members of various ethnic minorities in Myanmar, including the Rohingya.
Interviews with Rohingya men and women took place in Myanmar’s Rakhine State – where the minority group is mainly concentrated – as well as in Thailand and predominantly Muslim Malaysia, which is a main destination for Rohingya refugees.
Rohingya Muslims who were “fleeing state-sponsored violence and attacks in Myanmar” lacked basic protections in neighboring Bangladesh and Thailand, and in Malaysia, Smith said.
“These governments have failed to vigorously investigate and prosecute acts of trafficking that took place wholly or partly within their territories.”
According to Fortify Rights, more than 650,000 Rohingya are displaced in Myanmar and Bangladesh and are vulnerable to being trafficked.
Many have crossed the border into Bangladesh, but the Bangladeshi government “has deliberately denied Rohingya protection and aid, leading tens of thousands to take dangerous and risky boat journeys to Thailand or Malaysia,” Fortify Rights said in a statement.
The group said it had documented cases of killings, rape and torture during sea crossings.
“Fortify Rights also documented the selling of Rohingya women and girls from traffickers’ camps in Thailand into forced marriages in Thailand and Malaysia, committing them to a lifetime of domestic servitude. For many, this is a transition from enslavement to enslavement,” Smith said, according to a transcript of his testimony to U.S. congressional representatives.
Source : benarnews
