Arakan News Agency
Every night, two or three Rohingya women were taken out from the detention pens and by the guards, says a migrant.
ALOR SETAR: Rohingya women migrants detained at a human trafficking syndicate transit camp in Padang Besar, Thailand, were treated like sex slaves and subjected to gang rape by the camp guards, according to a woman migrant.
Nur Khaidha Abdul Shukur, 24, who was held for eight days with her baby at the camp, said: “Every night, two or three young and pretty Rohingya women were taken out from the detention pens by the guards.
“They would be gang-raped by the guards. Two young women at the camp became pregnant after the gang rape,” she told Bernama through an interpreter here today.
According to Nur Khaidha, there were also cases of the 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 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 in the pens were not allowed to talk and risked being beaten up.
The two pregnant Rohingya women, Nur Khaidha said, had been held at the transit camp for more than six months.
She said in the camp where she was detained last year, there were 15 Rohingya women, with five who had small children.
The five women with children were kept in the pens with their children but were not abused by the guards.
“Maybe the guards did not rape us because we had small children. But, regardless, I prayed every day so that I would not become their rape victim,” she said.
Nur Khaidha, who is from Maungdaw, Myanmar, followed in her husband’s footsteps to cross the Andaman Sea on a boat to Malaysia with her child.
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 also detained by the human trafficking syndicate at their transit camp in Bukit Wang Burma, Wang Kelian.
Nur Khaidha was detained for eight days at the transit camp at Padang Besar, while her husband was detained in the camp at Bukit Wang Burma for 22 days before he escaped.
Nurul Amin, who now works at a workshop in Alor Setar, said his desire for a better life made him, his wife and son take the gamble to ride the ‘death’ boats to Malaysia.
As what was told by his wife, Nurul Amin also narrated the same story – Rohingya women had been raped by the guards at the transit camp in Wang Kelian.
“In the night, several of the guards would go to the pens housing the women and take them to a nearby place.
“We heard the cries of the women because the place they raped them was very close to our pens,” he said.
Now, after about a year , Nurul Amin and his wife Nur Khaidha are thankful they are free of the abject misery of being detained at the transit camps of the human trafficking syndicates and want to start a new life.
Source : Bernama
