Rohingya woman in Bangladesh helps others flee Myanmar

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Rohingya woman in Bangladesh helps others flee Myanmar

2017-11-17 11:19 Last Updated At：11:19

Zahida Begum doesn't remember her home village, a tiny speck amid the mountains and forests of Myanmar. She was only 18 months old when her mother smuggled her across the Naf River on a fishing boat, carrying her into Bangladesh, among hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingya fleeing persecution in their home country.

Begum has been a refugee ever since. She grew up in Bangladesh's Rohingya refugee camps, and now earns a living working for a string of international aid groups. On quiet days, she's the kind of person who wanders around looking for someone to help.

So when frantic relatives called her in late September to tell her that Myanmar soldiers were burning Rohingya villages and tens of thousands of Rohingya were fleeing, the 28-year-old jumped into action.

She made calls to a half-dozen countries. She raised thousands of dollars. She called in favors and arranged for boats and smugglers.

And one day later, some 400 people — including some of Begum's relatives and other people from nearby villages — were safe.

"Had Zahida not sent those boats, we would have died in Myanmar," said 35-year-old Abdul Matlab, one of the people rescued that night.

Matlab now lives in Bangladesh with his extended family in a small shelter of bamboo and plastic tarp where they sleep huddled together on the floor.

He said from his village alone, Begum saved 70 people. But about 400 others from the village were killed by Myanmar government forces, he said.

Begum, a smiling, self-confident woman in a long black cloak and headscarf, grew up listening to stories about the persecution of Rohingya in Myanmar's Rakhine state, just across the Naf River.

Myanmar's Rohingya have been called one of the world's most persecuted minorities, a community of Muslims in a largely Buddhist country whose government refuses to recognize them as a lawful ethnic minority. Though some Rohingya families have lived in Myanmar for centuries, they are widely disparaged as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Not long before she heard from her frantic relatives in Myanmar, Begum had heard about the start of "clearance operations" by the country's security forces that eventually led to 618,000 Rohingya fleeing their homes and crossing the border into Bangladesh. The United Nations has said Myanmar's actions appeared to be "ethnic cleansing."

Begum knew she had to act quickly. There were mothers and children trying to flee. She remembered her mother's stories of their own journey out of Myanmar in 1990, when more than 250,000 Rohingya fled to escape forced labor, rape and religious persecution.

Begum told the group she was in contact with that they should make their way toward the Naf River border and wait for more instructions.

"I called my brother-in-law, who lives abroad, and told him our brothers and sisters have arrived near the river, and asked him how we can bring them across to Bangladesh," said Begum, who works as a translator and door-to-door health educator for aid and rights organizations including Human Rights Watch.

With the help of relatives in Australia and Malaysia, Begum said she raised more than $4,000 in a matter of hours. The money was wired to her through a shady middleman who charged a hefty fee.

She then contacted a fisherman in the Bangladeshi coastal village of Shamlapur, close to her home in the congested Kutupalong refugee camp, and asked him to hire two boats and set them off toward the Myanmar border.

Eventually, 70 families were brought out in the two boats, which had traveled more than 60 kilometers (100 miles) from Bangladesh to the pickup point in Myanmar, traveling through the Bay of Bengal and along the Naf River under the night sky. The smugglers charged more than $4,200.

Begum waited for the boats in Shamlapur, and first settled the new refugees around her own bamboo-and-tarp home. Eventually, she used what was left of the money, combined with more donations she had received, to give each family $35, then sent them to another refugee camp nearby to build their own shelters.

"If they are safe and healthy, I am content," Begum said when asked why she decided to help. "Nothing makes me more happy than that."

Rape, terror and death at sea: How a boat carrying Rohingya children, women and men capsized

2024-05-08 11:19 Last Updated At：11:21

MEULABOH, Indonesia (AP) — Huddled on board the boat, the 12-year-old girl quaked with fear.

The captain and crew who she says had tortured her and three other women and girls were not finished. And the punishment for disobedience, the men warned, would be death.

It was the third night that the girl and around 140 other ethnic Rohingya refugees had been trapped on the fishing boat off Indonesia’s coast. They had fled Bangladesh and their homeland of Myanmar in a bid to escape violence and terror, only to face the same at sea.

The 12-year-old — identified in this story only by the initial N, because she is a sexual assault survivor — tried to hide. She had already survived a night in the captain’s bedroom, where she says he and several crew members had beaten and sexually abused her.

Like most of the passengers, she had survived attacks by Myanmar’s military that forced her and her family to flee to neighboring Bangladesh. There, she had survived nearly seven years in violence-plagued refugee camps. And she had thus far survived this journey without her family, who hoped she’d make it to Malaysia, where she was promised as a child bride to a man she had never met.

The captain ordered more girls to join him and his crew in the bedroom.

“If you don’t come to us,” he shouted, “then we will capsize this boat!”

What happened next would force N and the other Rohingya on board into yet another battle for survival.

For many, this would be the battle they finally lost.

In March, Indonesian officials and local fishermen rescued 75 people from the overturned hull of a boat off the coast of Indonesia’s province of Aceh. Another 67 passengers, including at least 28 children, were killed when the boat capsized, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Until now, little was known about why the boat capsized. This account, as told to The Associated Press in interviews with eight surviving passengers, provides the first insight into what happened.

N’s journey began in Bangladesh, where a series of boats ferried her and other Rohingya across the Bay of Bengal.

The bedlam began, the passengers say, when they were transferred to a cramped Indonesian vessel that was supposed to take them to Indonesia. From there, they would be smuggled into Malaysia.

The Indonesian captain and crew separated the men from the women and forced the men into the boat’s cargo holds. Anyone who protested was beaten, says Muhammed Amin.

The captain and crew — who warned they were armed, though no one saw a gun — forced N and four other women and girls into the captain’s bedroom.

One of the women slipped out, but N and the others were trapped. The assaults by the captain and five of his six crew lasted all night, N says.

When morning dawned, N was allowed out to use the toilet. She hid among the other women, but the other three girls were abused for a second night.

On the third night, the three girls emerged from the captain’s room, sobbing and speechless.

The captain and crew demanded fresh victims. The women refused.

The captain and crew had been drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana, the passengers say. The furious captain threatened to capsize the boat unless the women complied.

Soon after, Jannat Ullah says, he saw the captain push the steering wheel with his leg.

The vessel tilted violently, sending passengers tumbling. And then it smashed into a wave.

In the blackness of the water, people screamed for salvation, for God, for their children.

N battled her way onto the boat’s overturned hull. Once again, she had managed to survive. But the three girls who were abused alongside her had not.

Amin spotted the captain and three crew members swimming away.

In the morning, a small fishing boat arrived, and took six people to shore.

Meanwhile, worsening waves had destabilized the capsized boat, which overturned again, killing more people.

Rain spared passengers death by dehydration. But as another night passed, it was clear not everyone would survive. Rahena Begum’s 9-year-old daughter stopped breathing.

The passengers prayed, then slid the child's body into the sea.

Around 30 minutes later, Rahena says, the rescue ship finally arrived.

The bodies of 12 women and three children have since been recovered off Aceh, according to the UNHCR.

Although the fishing boat’s crew rescued the initial six people the morning of March 20, search vessels weren’t launched until that evening. Officials didn’t finish rescuing the passengers until midday on March 21.

Ibnu Harris Al Hussain, chief of Banda Aceh’s search and rescue agency, said the rescue operation began shortly after his agency learned about the boat.

“The most important thing is that we have ensured their safety when they were found,” Hussain wrote in a message to the AP.

On April 2, police announced they had arrested three crew members, plus a fourth man who was not on the boat. They were charged with people smuggling, which carries a maximum 15-year prison sentence. Police are searching for the remaining crew, including the captain, who fled to Malaysia, West Aceh Police Chief Andi Kirana told the AP.

Police are not considering murder charges, Kirana says, because they believe the capsize was an accident.

But N and the other passengers believe the disaster was a deliberate act of revenge by a sadistic captain and crew. And for that, N says, the punishment should fit the crime.

“They tortured us. They treated us like animals,” she says. “We want the government to treat them like animals.”

Kirana also said police are not considering rape charges, because they haven’t received reports of sexual assault. But N says police have never questioned her.

N hopes to make it to Malaysia and to the man who wants her as his wife.

Maybe then, she says, she will finally be free — though in reality, Rohingya child brides in Malaysia often become prisoners to abusive husbands.

For now, all she can do is fight to survive another day.

“I don't want to suffer anymore,” she says.

Gelineau reported from Sydney.