Burma Human Rights Network’s report: “We also have dreams”
sometimes in the paddy field. The brokers tried to sell them, but did not because we sent the money
immediately. My sisters explained this to me while crying.”
The threat of being sold into slavery, including sexual slavery, and the risks of sexual violence, abuse
and exploitation are horrifying elements of the trafficking enterprise centered in the Rohingya
refugee camps in Bangladesh. The desperation of refugees to escape makes them easy targets for
abuse and exploitation once they endeavor to leave the camps. Because women who choose to
leave the camps for marriage often have less money or community support, they are even more
vulnerable to this sort of cruelty. The trafficking routes to India are less frequently used than those to
Malaysia and as such are far less likely to be monitored and reported on. Because of this, the
potential for violence against women on these routes is likely to be higher. The routes to India also
occur over land and often involve several different traffickers, each with their own agenda for the
people they are moving.
It should be noted that some of the family members BHRN talked to described safe journeys for
female family members where no one was harmed, abandoned, arrested, or extorted in the process.
These, however, were a small minority of cases. Even in the safest scenarios, refugees fleeing
Bangladesh are often arrested in the countries they flee to and held in immigration detention centers.
A 43-year old woman told BHRN about how she sent her 18-year-old daughter to Malaysia to be with
her husband, only for her to be arrested when she arrived, “She is my daughter who went abroad.
She would be over 18 years old. I don’t remember it exactly because our documents were burnt
down in Myanmar. I don’t know what age she said in the prison. She went there 13 months ago. I
sent her to Burma from Bangladesh. From Burma, she went there (Malaysia) via Rangoon. She is
in prison now as she was detained while boarding the vehicle to Malaysia. They had been married
for three or four years. We fled to Bangladesh, but she wasn’t included in the data card here in order
to be able to go to Malaysia. After she arrived there, her husband went to visit her in prison once, but
couldn’t visit her again due to COVID-19-related restrictions and lockdowns. The first time, he visited
her and talked to her for one hour after bribing the officers. The second time, he could talk to her
across a glass partition. Now, he can’t even go to see her, though he sometimes sends money.”
A 38-year-old woman told BHRN about the pressure she felt to marry off her daughters and the
struggle to do so without money, “I want to get one of my daughters married. If I don’t have enough
money or I am unable to pay for the dress and things for my son-in-law to be, then I won’t be able to
get my daughter married. It is customary for the parents of the bride to present their son-in-law with
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