TRAFFICKED
FROM HELL TO HADES
(DRAFT)
The
plight of Rohingya women from Burma
trafficked in Pakistan
A report from Images Asia,
November 1999
“We have come all the way here, not just because we
were trying to escape poverty and find a way to earn a better living like the
Bangladeshis,
but because it was our only option to save our lives.”(Interview
with a Rohingya woman in Karachi on 22.11.99)
INTRODUCTION
Overview and acknowledgements
With
this report, Images Asia seeks to raise international awareness of the plight
of Rohingya women from Burma
trafficked to Pakistan,
an issue which, until now, has been completely overlooked. The root cause of the situation may be found
in the brutal policies of the Burmese military junta towards an entire people,
the Rohingyas of Burma’s Northern
Arakan
State. In particular, the denial of citizenship and
related abuses have had far-reaching consequences, and this has led to the
untold saga of thousands of people who have been rendered stateless, who are
forced to flee from country to country in order to escape persecution and find
a means by which they barely survive.
For the Rohingyas, being smuggled across international borders is the only
option, and trafficking a risk that cannot be avoided. Referred to as “aliens” or “illegals”
everywhere, these people are denied any form of protection. Rohingya women, men
and children are all affected, but not equally.
The prime focus of this report is the fate of the Rohingya women, who are
extremely vulnerable at the hands of pimps and traffickers, and largely ignored
by the international as well as the NGO community.
The
present report has been prepared by a researcher from Images Asia who has
extensive experience in documenting the human rights situation in Burma. It is to be submitted to Ms Radhika
Coomaraswamy, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, its causes
and its consequences. Images Asia
hopes that Ms Coomaswarmy will no longer leave the plight of these women unheard,
and that she will be able to address this issue in her report to the 56th
session of the UN Commission on Human Rights in which her focus will be on
trafficking of women.
This
report considers the problem in a broad context: from the root causes in Burma,
the circumstances in Bangladesh,
the women’s journey across the Indian sub-continent, and their arrival and
living conditions in Karachi. Many obstacles had to be faced during the
field research. These included time
constraints, general unawareness among local NGOs, the absence of shelters for
rescued women – the Edhi Foundation ran the main shelter for women in Karachi,
and none of the rescued Burmese women were accommodated there at the time of
the field trip. In addition, customary
practices among the Rohingya community made it difficult to obtain first hand
information. While interviewing women in
Karachi,
the researcher was confronted by fearful members of the Rohingya community
asking her whether the ultimate aim of this research was deportation to Burma. This alienation can be easily understood if
one remembers the involuntary character of the UNHCR repatriation programme
from Bangladesh,
where the majority of the women interviewed had previously been camp
residents. For this report, interviews
with a total of 30 women were conducted: some in Bangladesh
in March 1999, but mostly in Karachi,
Pakistan,
in November 1999. The accounts bring to
light an undeniable pattern of trafficking and expose the extreme vulnerability
of the Rohingya women. The report also
includes information collected from a supposed ex-trafficker, and material
compiled by several NGOs: LHRLA in
Karachi,
UBINIG and Dhaka Ahsania Mission, in Dhaka.
This
preliminary study is far from comprehensive, but is intended to be a first step
in addressing human trafficking from Burma
to Pakistan. It would have not been possible without the
valuable assistance of the well-respected Karachi-based NGO, Lawyers for Human
Rights and Legal Aid (LHRLA) who shared their expertise and documentation, and
provided contacts among the so-called “Burmese illegals” around Karachi. We also would like to thank Mr Noor Hussain,
a Rohingya social worker from Arakanabad, Karachi,
for his time and diligence in introducing us to many women of his community. We also are grateful to many other
individuals and NGOs in Pakistan
and Bangladesh,
as well as to the Rohingya women
themselves for their contribution in this research.
We
hope this report will draw attention to the specific situation of Rohingya
women victims of traffickers, and will render the issue of their trafficking to
Pakistan,
as well as their protection, a matter of urgency to be addressed.
Definition of trafficking
Internationally,
there is no consensus regarding the term “trafficking”. Historically, it has been referred to as the
“trade of women for the purpose of prostitution” usually involving the crossing
of international borders, but excluding other forms of trafficking. In 1994, the UN General Assembly stated that
trafficking is the “illicit and clandestine movement of persons across national
and international borders, largely from developing countries and some countries
with economies in transition, with the end goal of forcing women and children
into sexually and economically oppressive and exploitative situations for the
profit of recruiters, traffickers and crime syndicates, as well as other
illegal activities related to trafficking, such as forced domestic labour,
false marriages, clandestine employment and false adoption.”
Yet
this UN definition is incomplete. It does not include boys and men who are also
at times victims of trafficking, and the listing of situations should not be
seen as exhaustive. A key element behind trafficking is coercion. However,
there can be other situations where there is no coercion at the time of
trafficking, but where a person, as a result of debt bondage, arrives later in
a circumstance tantamount to slavery, such as being forced to work in appalling
labour conditions.
BACKGROUND
For
an accurate understanding of trafficking of Rohingya women to Pakistan,
one must look at the root causes of the problem, namely the status of the
Rohingyas in Burma,
and the oppressive policies they suffer there.
Since Independence, Burma has been destabilised by civil wars opposing various
ethnic groups to the central government, a legacy, in part, of the
divide-and-rule policies of the British colonial administration. This instability led to a military coup in 1962. Since then, the country has been ruled by a
military junta which has implemented ruthless policies to quell any
dissent. In the 1990 election, the
National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi won an
overwhelming victory, but so far the military has refused to hand over power to
the elected representatives.
As a result of four
decades of military rule, Burma has been ravaged by economic mismanagement,
insurgency problems remain unsolved, and border areas are left
under-developed. A wide range of human
rights abuses, such as forced labour, arbitrary arrests and summary executions,
is prevalent throughout the country. It
is unnecessary to recall the appalling human rights record of the military
regime. Since 1991 the UN General
Assembly, most recently in November 1999, has adopted annual resolutions
expressing concern over the deteriorating human rights situation in Burma. The UN
Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, Mr Rajsoomer Lallah, in his reports to the Human
Rights Commission and the General Assembly has repeatedly issued strong
conclusions and recommendations to the same effect. In June 1999 the ILO decided to exclude Burma from its programmes and activities because of the
pervasive use of forced labour.
As a consequence to
the disastrous economic situation, forced labour and harassment by the
military, migration and human trafficking from Burma to neighbouring countries have flourished. In Thailand, in addition to over 120,000 refugees living in camps
established along the border, up to one million Burmese migrants, most of them
undocumented, are seeking a better means of livelihood.
Trafficking of
Burmese women into the sex industry in Thailand has been comprehensively reported in previous
publications of Human Rights Watch
and Images Asia. However, trafficking of Burmese women has
also taken place to India, China and Bangladesh. There are an
estimated 40,000 illegal Burmese migrants living in the State of Mizoram, and unknown numbers of Burmese sex workers can be
found in Chinese border towns. Many
women are also lured into sweatshops where they work in slavery-like conditions
as cheap or sometimes unpaid labour.
The
Rohingyas: a people without a country
The
Rohingyas are a minority group mostly living in the northern part of Arakan
State
in Burma,
bordering Bangladesh. They have generally embraced a conservative
form of Islam. Ethnically they are
related to Bengalis sharing similar traditions, customs and religion. In Burma,
they express a distinct identity, and have resisted assimilation into mainstream
Burmese Buddhist culture. The majority
of Rohingya people live in abject poverty, and suffer from severe lack of
education and health care.
Arakan was an
independent kingdom until 1784, encompassing at times the southern part of
today’s Bangladesh. Rohingya
Muslims and Rakhine Buddhists have co-existed in the region for centuries.
Until
WWII, the two communities did not show any sign of strong animosity. But in 1942 the evacuation of the British
created a political vacuum which gave room for accumulated ethnic tensions to
explode. Communal riots broke out in
Arakan between Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims. After Independence,
some Rohingya leaders formed a Mujahid movement and demanded autonomy.
But
the situation of the Rohingya people only started deteriorating seriously at
the time of the military take-over in 1962.
Since then they have become targets for harsh treatments by the state
authorities. The first wave of migration out of Burma
to Pakistan
started in the years following the military coup. In 1978, the Burmese government launched an
operation called “Nagamin” (“Dragon King”) aimed at curtailing illegal
infiltration into Burma. It degenerated into abusive attacks on
Rohingyas both by the army and local Rakhines.
This unleashed a mass exodus of Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh. Massive illegal migrations to Pakistan
coincide to this period. In 1982,
following the subsequent repatriation to Burma,
the military junta amended the Citizenship Law.
This amendment clearly targeted the Rohingyas, making it almost
impossible for them to be recognised as citizens.
Again
in 1991-92, the Rohingya people became the scapegoats of the military
regime. A ruthless campaign of gross
human rights abuses, rape and excessive forced labour, forced
once again 250,000 people to take shelter in refugee camps in Bangladesh. The third major influx of Rohingyas into Pakistan
corresponds to this period. From 1994
onwards, UNHCR became involved in the camps in Bangladesh
and gained access to the Arakan side of the border. As a result, a repatriation programme was
initiated by UNHCR but its involuntary character was denounced by NGOs. The repatriation has not been completed yet,
and is presently stalled. Since its
implementation, new refugees and many returnees have continued to trickle back
into Bangladesh,
but these have not been allowed to settle in the camps and have to survive in
extreme poverty in jungle areas or in the slums around Cox’s Bazaar, facing
deportation by the Bangladeshi authorities.
Currently, an outflow –although less significant- of Rohingyas fleeing
military harassment and economic oppression in Arakan is still ongoing, and
trafficking to Pakistan
continues unabated.
Despite
being recognised as de facto refugees in the camps, there is no individual
screening process available to Rohingyas under the UNHCR Refugee Status
Determination in Bangladesh. In Malaysia,
for example, where they are able to apply for refugee status, only a few who
could prove involvement in anti-government activities have been
recognised. Even though they are de facto stateless, the vast majority
has seen their applications rejected, and thus cannot enjoy any form of
protection. Consequently they are
treated as “illegal migrants” with all its implications.
UNHCR
has identified six areas of major concerns that constitute a push-factor for
the outflow of Rohingyas to Bangladesh:
1.
Provision of Citizenship:
There is a direct correlation between the lack of citizenship and the root
causes for displacement. Lt-Gen. Khin
Nyunt, Secretary no. 1 of the State Peace and Development Council, stated that
“Suffice it to say that the issue is essentially one of migration, of people
seeking greener pastures. These people
are not originally from Myanmar
but have illegally migrated to Myanmar
because of population pressures in their own country. … They are racially,
ethnically, culturally different from the other national races in our country.” However, an historical analysis of the
settlement pattern of the Rohingya people in Northern
Arakan considers that nationality rights are for
most of them a legitimate aspiration.
Although, following amendments in the Citizenship Act in 1982, they
found themselves deprived of the rights inherent to citizenship. The analysis
concludes that their present legal status amounts, in international law, to de facto statelessness.
2.
Freedom of movement:
Rohingyas in Northern Arakan
are not granted the same freedom of movement as other citizens/residents of Burma,
regardless of their documentation. They
are being virtually confined to their village tracts.
3.
Compulsory labour:
Although forced labour is a nation-wide practice, Rohingyas have been
especially targeted for road construction work, building of military camps,
portage for the army, etc.
4.
Compulsory contributions
and informal taxes: Compulsory food procurement, extortion and arbitrary
taxation are common practices and have disastrous consequences on the economic
viability of the community.
5.
Land
confiscation/Relocation of persons: The construction of “Model villages” to
resettle Rakhine Buddhists onto Muslim land has been ongoing for many
years. Land confiscation, forced
relocation, and forced labour are directly related to these programmes, and
contribute to departures.
6.
Rice purchasing System: A
deliberate rice deficit in combination with the high price of rice has
constituted another reason for the outflow of people to Bangladesh.
In
addition to the areas of concern mentioned above, the population is regularly
subjected to systematic human rights abuses, such as arbitrary detentions,
summary executions, assaults and rape mostly by military personnel and local
authorities, but also from gangs of local Rakhine Buddhists, which generally
operate with total impunity.
These
human rights violations, and the deliberate policies of economic
underdevelopment imposed on them, have led to mass exoduses of a people out of
Burma to other countries, including Bangladesh, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the
UAE, as well as Malaysia and Thailand.
ROHINGYA WOMEN: STATELESS AND OPPRESSED IN BURMA
Interviews
with Rohingya women from different social backgrounds reveal the subordinate
status of these women in their own community.
They live under a relatively conservative interpretation of Islam. Their level of economic and political
participation is almost non-existent.
Women, even those belonging to the upper class, were not aware of any
women’s organisations. Multiple marriages
are common, especially in the poorer strata of the community. Most women are confined to their houses, and
are only able to go out covered with a burka.
During the interviewing process the researcher frequently encountered
difficulties in hearing the women’s voices as often men present would interfere
and answer for them. Similar experiences
were shared by other colleagues.
The subordinate
status of Rohingya women is also exacerbated by the current situation in Burma where men feel responsible for protecting their
womenfolk from abuses by the military and by the non-Muslim community. Sajda, a
19-year old educated Rohingya woman, commented: “The major problem is rape. Rape
is very common. We are not
respected. That is why women are too
afraid to leave their homes and even work outside. Often the military kidnapped girls and take
them to their camps. They are only
released after being gang raped. … Women
sometimes work in the garden around their house, but they cannot go to the
fields for fear of being assaulted. Even
in their house, women are not safe.”
The majority of
Rohingya women are illiterate. They are
usually not encouraged to receive education and at the most girls are sent to
study the Qu’ran at the madrassah. But
in most cases no education facility is available anyway. UNHCR has initiated programmes to improve
education in Northern
Arakan and felt compelled
to offer an additional rice allowance to families with daughters in order to
increase female attendance in the classrooms.
Health
care is grossly lacking in the villages in Northern
Arakan.
Rohingya women are often reluctant to visit government facilities, if
any, as they are usually treated with contempt.
Furthermore, the restrictions on their freedom of movement prevent them
from reaching clinics or hospitals outside their village tracts. Many women are suffering from multi-parity,
and infant mortality is also very high.
Zainab, the wife of a wealthy trader from Maungdaw, had just given birth
and faced medical complications: “We face
many problems for child delivery. My
sister-in-law died after giving birth in Maungdaw. I had my baby last month
[Jan ‘99] and bled profusely after the delivery. I decided to go to Akyab
for medical treatment. For us, it is so
difficult to travel anywhere, even to Akyab.
We have to pay so much money for a pass. They even discriminated among
women. When the boat arrives at the
Akyab jetty, there are two gateways, one for Muslims and one for Buddhists, and
we have to give so many bribes. This
treatment costs me 20,000 Kyats:
5,000 Kyats for medical expenses, but the remaining 15,000 Kyats were for
travelling costs.”
Women usually do not
have employment outside of their homes, and it is uncommon to see women working
in the fields. However, as an economic
necessity, widows and women heading a household do take jobs as day labourers
or housemaids.
Forced
labour is generally not imposed on women, but the constant demands for forced
labour on their husbands and male relatives, sometimes for long and repeated
periods of time, deprive women and children from their daily earnings, and put
a heavy toll on the economic survival of the whole family. This situation can be so acute as to destroy
the fabric of family life. Some women
have been expelled by their own relatives who could not afford to feed
them. Zobida is a 24 years old widow,
mother of 4 children. She was
interviewed in Bangladesh:
“My husband was always ordered to do
forced labour. About 5 months ago, my
son was sick, so he refused to go. The
military came to pick him up and took him to the Chittapurika army camp where
they shot at him. Then the soldiers
called me to carry him to the hospital, but he died on the way. After he died, I stayed with my
parents-in-law, but they could not afford to feed my children and me. They told me that they no longer wanted to
see me if I did not find a job. I could
not find any work, so I decided to leave.
Here I am a beggar.”. Rubia, another young widow with 2
children, lived a similar drama: “When I was 4 months pregnant, the NaSaKa
caught my husband, blindfolded him and took him away. One month later, they sent someone to my
house to return my husband's clothes. I
was told that he was dead without any other explanation. After that, I went to stay with my 2
brothers, sometimes with one, sometimes with the other. But most of the time my brothers were busy
doing forced labour as porters or cutting wood in the forest. And they
could not provide for me.”
The
worst tool of oppression used against Rohingya women consists of rape and
sexual assault. A UNHCR staffperson in Bangladesh
told the researcher that “selective rape” triggered the 1991/92 mass exodus of
refugees to Bangladesh. Many women, in particular widows, stated that
the safety of their teenage daughters led them to flee their homes in
Arakan. Rape cases have been documented
in reports by Human Rights Watch and other NGOs. Rape is not only committed by the military,
but reportedly also by local Rakhines who are able to act with complete
impunity, or by criminals believed to be backed by the military.
Two
of the women interviewed by Images Asia in Karachi
were victims of such atrocities. A now
elderly lady, Asia Khatun, had one of her breasts sliced off: “I left after they did this to me. I was alone at home with my children while
the men were working. Some Maghs
came in to attack me. They cut my breast
with a knife and I fell unconscious.” Yasmin, a woman of 35, undressed to
expose the scars on the lower part of her body: a stab wound in the pubis area,
a large injury on her right buttock and another knife cut on her leg: “I
was raped by non-Muslims. I was 12 or 13
years old at that time. I had been
working in the field and I was returning to my sister’s house. On the way, 2 or 3 men assaulted me and they
did this to me.”
Although
she did not explicitly admit to it, Farida’s testimony suggested that she had
been raped too, and subsequently abandoned by her husband: “We, the women, used to fetch water at the river bank, and the
soldiers used to come and make problems to us.
They would tear our burka off our faces.
Sometimes they raped women or attempted to do so. My husband was taken as a coolie by the
army. When he came back home, I told him
that I wanted to leave. He didn’t agree
and he kept the children. I came here
alone.”
Forced
relocation, usually without any compensation, is another push factor for
departure described by Rahima, a widow with 2 sons, who arrived in Pakistan
in 1997: “The army took my husband as a porter and for two weeks they didn’t
give him any food. He died of beatings
and starvation. Other porters brought
his dead body and I buried him. After
his death I worked cleaning houses. We
had a house and 3 acres of land to grow paddy and vegetables. But within a few months the government took
everything, our land and our house, to give to the Maghs [Rakhine
Buddhists]. “You are not our people,”
they told me, “You have no right to have land in Burma. You should go away!” I had some relatives in Pakistan and they invited me to
join them.”
ROHINGYA WOMEN: UNWANTED REFUGEES IN BANGLADESH
All Rohingya women,
as well as men, who have been trafficked to Pakistan, have first come to Bangladesh. In some cases
women were coerced right from their villages in Northern Arakan, but the majority fell into the clutches of the
trafficking network in Bangladesh.
Over the last two
decades, Bangladesh has been burdened by two mass exoduses of Rohingya
refugees: in 1978 and 1991/92 (see details above). Not surprisingly, the major influxes of
newcomers in Pakistan coincide with these two mass exoduses. The refugee camps were actually ideal
recruiting grounds for traffickers.
UNHCR and NGOs providing assistance in the camps confirmed that human trafficking
was thriving at the height of the influx.
This corroborates the testimonies of women interviewed in Pakistan who had in most cases transited through or resided in
camps, often for several years, before embarking on the journey across the
sub-continent.
From
1994 onwards, UNHCR initiated a programme of voluntary repatriation. However, NGOs working in the camps questioned
the voluntariness of the programme. Many refugees complained of being coerced
into signing for return under threats from Bangladeshi camp officials. These pressures exerted on them often
involved physical violence, verbal abuse and denial of food rations. These
incidents and threats have also been instrumental in increasing the outflow to Pakistan. Farida, allegedly raped in Burma,
subsequently fled to a refugee camp in Bangladesh: “The
Bangladeshi camp-in-charge used to visit us at night time and demanded us to
show our ration card. He told us that
they were no more problems in Burma and that we will be sent
back. He put so much pressure on me,
that I decided to go to Pakistan.” Another 29-years old woman now living in a Karachi
slum recalled: “We left the refugee camp because the food was not sufficient, the
accommodation was bad, the authorities were harassing us and there was no
job. We had relatives who were already
living in Karachi. They wrote
to us saying that we could get rice and fish there.”
UNHCR
failed to achieve any fundamental improvements in the situation in Northern
Arakan, and the “voluntary” repatriation programme
took place when basic criteria for safe return were not met. In some cases, women were forcibly
repatriated, later returned to Bangladesh,
and then headed to Pakistan. Mobina, an elderly lady from Maungdaw, wept
when she explained how 4 members of her family were killed in Burma:
“They didn’t even allowed us to bury
their dead bodies. So we ran away to the
refugee camps in Bangladesh. But later we were forcibly sent back to Burma. The Burmese authorities always repeated that
we were not from Burma. I decided to flee again to Bangladesh. First I begged to get money, but later I went
to Pakistan.”
Thousands
of Rohingyas who escaped across the Bangladesh
border did not settle in the refugee camps.
After the UNHCR repatriation process started new arrivals were no longer
admitted in the camps. They went to swell
the slum population of Cox’s Bazaar or stayed in hiding in the jungle areas,
totally deprived of any humanitarian assistance. There are many instances of
women being arrested, detained and deported back to Burma. Because of the fear of deportation Rohingyas
living outside the camps have become largely invisible and extremely
vulnerable. Their number is roughly
estimated at 40,000.
In
order to eke out an existence, women beg, or send their children into the
streets to beg. Others survive
collecting firewood and selling it to earn a few Takas,
contributing to the depletion of the local environment, one of the arguments
used by the Bangladeshi authorities to justify their expulsion. Others work in the local fishing industry or
find employment as domestic servants, often in conditions tantamount to
slavery.
UBINIG,
a Bangladeshi NGO, carried out a research among Rohingya women living outside
the camps and reported various cases of disappearances of young girls. Abductions of young women, rape and sexual
assaults are thus not uncommon. We can easily conclude that the kidnapped
girls are sold and trafficked either within Bangladesh
itself or to other countries.
The
local press has reported cases when the police ‘rescued’ Rohingya refugees on
the verge of being trafficked to India. In an interview with Images Asia, a
staffperson from Dhaka Ahsania Mission (DAM), a Dhaka-based NGO, related a
specific case in which they got involved: “In
May 1998, a bus carrying 71 passengers, mostly women and children of various
ages, was driving from Cox's Bazaar to Benapole (Indian border). The driver got suspicious about the
passengers he was carrying and when the bus stopped at a petrol station, he
informed the police. The police
organised a road block near Jessore and intercepted the bus. This way they found out that all the
passengers were going to be trafficked illegally to India. The passengers were taken to police
custody. Most of them told the police
that they were from the Cox's Bazaar area.
However, when the police investigated the addresses that they had given,
these were either non-existent or incomplete.
These women did not admit they were Rohingyas, but the police assumed
they were.”
DAM is running a
shelter for women and children rescued from trafficking near Jessore. The police thus contacted them about this
case, and delivered the Bangladeshi women to them. However, the Rohingya women were not handed
over, since they could not prove their identities. At the time of the interview with DAM, in January
1999, they were still in detention. Many
reports of similar cases give cause for fear that these women may be imprisoned
for an indefinite period of time, and may endure custodial violence at the
hands of their jailers.
THE JOURNEY ACROSS THE SUB-CONTINENT
The
journey across the sub-continent starts in the Rohingya’s homes in Arakan or in
Bangladesh
- whether in the refugee camps or elsewhere.
As explained by Mr Azad,
a supposed ex-trafficker, a pimp or a human trafficker usually approaches the
head of a family, offering jobs in Pakistan. He proposes that he accompanies him back to Karachi. If the head of the household agrees and says
that he will come along with his family, the trafficker requests him to contact
his friends and other relatives and to convince them to join as well. He then forms a large group of 60, 100,
sometimes more. The family then sells
all its possessions, principally land and house, in order to pay the amount of
money required for the journey. If the
family is too poor and does not own any property to sell, it might borrow money
from relatives and friends, or else the trafficker might agree to advance the
cost of the journey. He is well aware
that once in Pakistan
he can easily recover his loan by selling family members, especially young
girls.
After
she fled Burma,
Mehmooda, a widow with 4 children, first tried to find a means to survive in Bangladesh: “I
first stayed in Cox’s Bazaar for about one year. I worked cleaning houses and my children were
selling fish. It was hard to earn some
money there and it was not sufficient for the 5 of us. A man that we knew came to my quarter where
many Rohingya people are living. He
offered us to accompany him to Pakistan where there are better
jobs and prices are lower. He demanded
10,000 Rs for my family. As I could not
pay, he said we could reimburse him as soon as we started working in a carpet
factory in Karachi.”
The
group may be mixed, including both Bangladeshi and Rohingyas from Burma. Once the group sets out on the journey, the
participants have to do whatever the trafficker orders them to do. They are completely at his mercy. The traffickers always have contact with the
border police. The group usually travels
by bus to a location near the Indo-Bangladesh border. They arrive at the border at night, usually
on foot, and the trafficker orders the people to wait quietly behind while he
negotiates with the border police to let the group through. He tells them the size of the group and
bribes them accordingly. The border
police then leave their posts for a short while to allow the group to cross
illegally.
Once
in India,
they are herded to Calcutta
and board a train to New
Delhi, or to Ajmer
in Rajasthan. From there, they will
continue their journey to the Pakistan
border. Two major routes are generally
used to reach Pakistan:
the fastest goes through Punjab. The group travels by train to Amritsar
in Indian Punjab and then crosses the border at Qusoor, on foot and always at
night time, after the trafficker has negotiated safe passage in return for
bribes. From there the people walk to Lahore
where they take another train to Karachi. The other major entry point to Pakistan
is the border between Rajasthan,
India
and Sindh,
Pakistan. In this region, the Thar
Desert lies on both sides of the border. The group treks on foot for 10 to 15 days
from village to village across the Rajasthan desert. They usually walk through the night, and rest
hidden behind trees during the day.
Local villagers might guide them in exchange for money. Here again, the trafficker will arrange the
border crossing with the border security forces. From there, they will board a bus and finally
reach Karachi. The whole journey across the subcontinent
requires between 10 days to a month.
However,
accounts from women interviewed reveal that this journey is rarely
straightforward, and many obstacles are encountered on the way. In many instances, only of a third or half of
those who join the original group actually reach Karachi. Often, members of the group are arrested or
get lost during the journey, and those people are always left behind. Some disappears; others die on the way.
Sometimes,
the trafficker sets up a large group of people, collects the money, and
abandons the group on the way. Mr Azad
added: “In some cases, another trafficker
might take over the abandoned group, especially if it consists of a majority of
women and children. He knows that, even
though he is unable to extort more money from them, he will be able to sell
them or make them work for him when they arrive in Pakistan.”
The group is
sometimes subjected to serious abuses at the hands of the traffickers. Additional money is extorted for various
reasons along the way, people are left near starvation, and killings have been
reported. Rashida and her family paid a
trafficker, but complained: “The journey
was very hard. We had to pay more money
to the border police. We were only given
one meal a day. When we crossed to Pakistan,
the guide [the trafficker] ordered us to stay quiet while he was doing the
negotiations for us. Unfortunately one
baby in our group started crying. He
grabbed the baby and threw him in the water.
The baby drowned.”
Several women
interviewed told that they lost family members during the trip across India. Bano is a
widow who fled Burma with her children, but arrived alone in Pakistan in 1996: “We
stayed in Delhi
for a while, but one day the police tried to catch us. So we all scattered, and I lost all my
children. I begged there for several
months but could not find them. So I
came here alone.”
Women are especially
at risk of sexual violence when crossing international borders. Reportedly the Bangladeshi border police has
been more lenient with Rohingya refugees.
Farida related that during her journey: “…Bangladeshi border officials questioned us, but we told them that we
were from the refugee camps and that we were leaving Bangladesh. So they let us go….”
The border between India and Pakistan seems to be under tighter control. Mr Azad even told us: “Usually these people crossed the Pakistani border at night time and on
foot. But there are many instances when
the Pakistani border rangers arrested them and pushed them back to India. The Indian border patrol sometimes fired at
them. But later they will try to cross
again.”
When the group is
caught, women became targets for rape and sexual assault by border guards. In 1997, Rahima paid a trafficker to be taken
over to Pakistan: “I was in a group of 60 people. We travelled through Amritsar.
When we crossed the border to Pakistan
at night, the Pakistani border rangers arrested us. They detained us for 2 days and pushed us
back to India. We tried to cross again but this time we were
arrested by the Indian border guards. They
took all the young girls and raped them.
There were about 10 of them in our group, aged 12 or 13. They kept them in a place under guard. After two hours they were released and sent
back to their families. They looked
almost dead. Some were unconscious. They were bleeding and wounded. They couldn’t walk and we had to carry them
to continue our way.”
Mehmooda faced a
similar situation in 1996: “When we came here, my sister-in-law was
also raped at the border checkpoint by the Indian police. She was a married
woman and mother of 2 children. We came
in a group of 80 people, and 5 women were taken by the police and sexually
assaulted. The other girls were all around 13 or 14 and still unmarried. The police released all of them after a short
time. My sister-in-law had to be sent to
hospital.”
As
confirmed by a senior Pakistani police officer, everyone crossing the Pakistani
border illegally needs the services of a trafficker. They are always working in connivance with
the border authorities. Another woman
also named Mehmooda, who travelled with a disabled child, testified to this: “When we crossed the border into Pakistan we went to the
commander’s house and we were sent by army truck to the nearest railway
station.”
ROHINGYA WOMEN: SOLD IN PAKISTAN
In
a report dated March 1994, the Sindh police
estimated the number of illegal Burmese living in and around Karachi
in 1993 at around 200,000, an increase of 700% from their previous survey of
1988. The police records also indicate
that Burmese (who are all Rohingyas) comprise 14%, and Bangladeshis 80%, of the
total undocumented immigrant population in Karachi. Images Asia
believes that the real number of Rohingyas in Karachi
is likely to be much higher since many of them would conceal their origin in
fear of deportation to Burma. Rohingya community leaders in Karachi
speak of a total Rohingya population of over 300,000.
Living conditions in Karachi
The
Rohingya population in Pakistan
is mostly concentrated in the suburbs of Karachi,
including Korangi, Orangi, Landhi. In
these areas some of the Rohingya settlements are named after their place of
origin, such as “Arakanabad”, “Burmi Colony”, “Arakan Colony”. Others neighbourhoods have a mixed population
of Rohingyas and Bangladeshis. All these
settlements receive regular visits from law enforcement agencies extorting
protection money from their undocumented inhabitants. Arakanabad is probably the poorest with about
5,000 people from Burma
living in the harshest conditions. This
slum has sprawled near the seacoast not far from the main harbour. The residents are entangled in a land dispute
and might face eviction. The houses are
merely shacks made of bamboo, grass, and plastic sheeting. Most of the slum dwellers are employed in the
fishing industry, cleaning fish or peeling prawns, while some men work on the
fishing trawlers. There is only one
clinic run by Jamaat-e-Islami,
and the local physician confirmed that malnutrition is rampant, especially
among children. There is only one
self-supported school. Undocumented
children are not permitted to attend government schools unless their parents
pay a high bribe that most cannot afford.
Most children do not receive any education at all, and work in the prawn
factories, or make carpets, to contribute to the meagre income of their
families. The researcher visited a prawn
factory, which consists of a dark room where around one hundred children aged 5
to 10 were peeling prawns, squatting in the water all day. For each bowl of peeled prawns they receive
10 Rs (20 US cents) and they usually manage to fill up 3 or 4 bowls per
day. Similarly, the carpet industry
mainly employs child labour.
The
migratory movement of Rohingya Muslims to Pakistan
took off in the early ‘60s when the military grabbed power in Burma. Since then, there have been two major
increases of population in the settlements of Karachi
in the late ‘70s and the early ‘90s, which are clearly linked to the two mass
influxes of refugees into Bangladesh. At presently the flow of newcomers seems to
have slowed down, but still continues.
The trafficking business
In
relation to trafficking, Pakistan is known as a sending, receiving as well as transit
country. However, the Government has
remained insensitive to the plight of illegal migrants, and has largely ignored
the issue of trafficking.
Since
they are not recognised as citizens of Burma,
and are consequently deprived of any form of documentation, it is reasonable to
say that 200,000 or more Rohingya Muslims have been smuggled in one way or
another into Pakistan. Unfortunately no reliable data is available
to give any approximation of the extent of the trafficking business. According to Mr Azad, the supposed
ex-trafficker: “In 1991/92, about 20 or
30 pimps and traffickers were bringing a group of people from Bangladesh to Karachi every month. But now it
has decreased to 3 or 4 per month. This
trafficking has come to the knowledge of the authorities, and they have stepped
up the control. These activities have
turned more clandestine now. Maybe they
have chosen to go to other destinations.
The pimps and the police are always working hands in hands.” We have been unable until now to verify this
information.
Interesting
indicators were provided by LHRLA. In
their survey of women in detention in Karachi,
12% of them were found to be from Burma
while 80% were Bangladeshi. Another
LHRLA’s research conducted between 1991 and 1993 also revealed that
approximately 100 to 150 Bangladeshi women were brought into Pakistan
as human cargo everyday.
If we apply a similar ratio to this figure, we can roughly estimate that an
average of 12 to 18 Rohingya women were trafficked daily to Pakistan
during the same period.
Following
its survey in Karachi,
the Sindh police has expressed concern over the impact of illegal immigration
on law and order, and while it has identified the Afghans with arms smuggling
and drug trafficking, it has associated Bangladeshis and Burmese with the flesh
trade and prostitution.
Mr
Azad drew the portrait of a trafficker: “He is Bangladeshi or Burmese, but has
always Pakistani nationality. He is usually middle aged, between 30 and
50. He is always living among his own
community. Often he is the owner of a
pan [betel nut] stall or he is working in a restaurant. Regularly he disappears for several
months. His family would explain that he
has gone fishing at sea or that he is working in some far away factories, while
he has actually gone back to Bangladesh or Burma to recruit and fetch
another group.” The
pimps all have a strong link with the law enforcement agencies and have
established an extensive network throughout the sub-continent.
When
the group of Rohingyas finally arrives in Karachi,
the trafficker usually takes them to a den. Language barriers increase their
vulnerability. Those who have relatives
in the city are sent to stay with them, and it is not unusual that the
trafficker will first demand more money from the relatives before handing them
over. Women and children with no
relatives are often sold into sexual slavery or domestic servitude after being
married off to the buyer to legitimise their enslavement.
When
the woman is auctioned off on the flesh market, she is paraded as a “commodity”
in front of potential buyers, her physical attributes are appraised, her skills
assessed, and the bargaining begins. A
reporter from the Urdu daily newspaper, Jang,
witnessed this humiliating display. She
went undercover to buy a girl from a pimp called Nizam in Rajput Colony, in Karachi. Here are a few excerpts from the conversation
that she taped:
Jang: Can I get a girl who can speak Urdu?
Nizam: Of course, sister. We get girls from not just Bangladesh,
but also from Hindustan
[India],
Sri Lanka
and Burma. The girl we got from Hindustan
will know Urdu.
Jang: We
want an unmarried girl… We want a virgin.
Nizam: Sister, don’t worry, she will be unmarried.
Jang: Will you arrange the nikah [marriage]?
Nizam: Of course. It will be a registered nikah from the
government. You will get the nikahnama
[marriage contract] immediately… it comes with the girl.
Jang: What if I buy the girl and then the
police stops us at the railway station?
Nizam: That is not
possible. There is no police station in Karachi that will
keep you even for one minute. I take
full responsibility. The police will say
nothing.
Jang: What about outside Karachi?
Nizam: Where do you want to go? … Wherever you go it is my responsibility -
the police will not say anything. When
you buy the girl, the police in fact will drop you home.
The selling price of
a woman generally ranges from US$1,285 to US$2,428 depending on her age,
beauty, virginity, education, etc. A
pimp earns on average between US$200 and US$229 net for each woman, and can
make over 100 of such sales a month.
Thereafter, the woman
might be sold to someone else, forced into prostitution, or serving as
concubine or slave to rural landlords.
During our field research, we were only able to
collect a little evidence about the sale of Rohingya women. Most of the interviewees seemed aware that it
happens, but did not know of specific cases.
Sajda, a young educated Rohingya woman, was more informative: “Non-accompanied women are
facing many problems. I have heard
something about trafficking, but not much.
It is difficult to know about these things. Some women disappeared on the way, and we
will never know what has happened to them.
Here in Pakistan
I have only heard of two cases. Both
girls had been sold into a fake marriage as soon as they arrived here. Their relatives are actually living in our
quarter. But we only came to know about
their cases years later, when their daughters came back to visit their
family. One of the girls was sold in Punjab
when she was 15. She got forcibly
married and 8 years later she managed to come back to Karachi
to visit her family, and she had 2 or 3 children. The other girl was only 8 years old when she
was sold and forcibly married. She also
came back after 8 or 9 years. She was no
longer able to speak our language, but of course she recognised her parents.”
The sale of Rohingya
women from Burma has never been exposed, while cases of Bangladeshi
women caught in this human trade have been better documented. Therefore, since Rohingyas and Bangladeshis
are often trafficked together, it seems reasonable to assume that they have
endured similar kinds and degrees of exploitation. Mr Zia Ahmed Awan, the president of LHRLA,
who is providing legal aid to both Bangladeshi and Burmese women in detention,
confirms: “There is no reason to believe that their experiences
are different. Bangladeshi and Burmese
have the same fate. The petitions to the
Court reflect this very clearly.”
Besides the risk of
being sold, many Rohingya women become victims of slavery through debt
bondage. Those too poor to pay their
passage have to reimburse the trafficker for the costs of the journey. He places them and their children in carpet
factories or other industries where they are forced to work for little or no
pay until their debt is recovered. Mr
Azad confirmed that factory owners actually pay traffickers to provide them
with slave labour. Mehmooda, a widow
with 4 children, is still paying off her debt of 10,000 Rs two years after she
arrived in Karachi: “Since we arrived here, two of my children
are working in the carpet factory. They
only earn Rs 20 a day. The rest of their
wages is retained to pay back our passage.
I don’t work, as I have to take care of my disabled child. My eldest son is a fisherman. He goes to sea
for 15 days and receives 400 or 500 Rs for that.”
Because of their
undocumented status, Rohingya women constantly face arrest and imprisonment as
illegal immigrants. In their survey
conducted in detention centres in Karachi between 1991 and 1993, LHRLA identified that 12% of
the female prisoners came from Burma. However, Mr
Zia Ahmed Awan, president of LHRLA, recognises the difficulty in identifying
their nationality, since Rohingya women frequently lie in their statements for
fear of being deported to Burma. The real
percentage could therefore be much higher.
They are charged under the Pakistan Foreigners Act prohibiting illegal
entry, and/or incorrectly charged under the Zina section of the Hudood
Ordinance, which specifically forbids extra-marital sex including adultery or
fornication.
Female prisoners in Pakistan are often detained in the same jails as men in
violation of Pakistani law, in overcrowded conditions and with inadequate
facilities for women. They do not have even access to legal assistance.
They are further
victimised by police and pimps while in detention. Asia Watch, now Human Rights
Watch, reported in 1992 that more than 70% of women in police custody in Pakistan are subjected to sexual or physical violence. Pimps, with the aid of jail authorities,
manage to see them regularly, harassing and threatening them so that the women
would submit to their offer to get them released, and return into their grasp.
Fatima, an elderly
lady now blind, whom we interviewed in Karachi, was trafficked to Pakistan and got arrested soon after crossing the border: “My
husband lost us while we were in India. So I arrived in Pakistan
alone with my 3 daughters. Unfortunately
we were caught by the police. I was put
in jail for 3 years with my 3 daughters.
First in Larkana jail, and later they transferred us to Karachi
jail. They were 35 other women from Burma
with me there. My son spent a lot of
money to bail us out.”
CONCLUSION
Rohingya
women from Burma
are trapped. In Burma
they are deprived of citizenship, and face wide-scale atrocities committed by
the military regime. In Bangladesh
they are unwanted refugees, threatened with repatriation or deportation, and
unable to meet their most basic needs.
For many, the only option left to them in order to survive is being
trafficked to Pakistan
to face an uncertain future that often holds further abuses. During the journey across the subcontinent
they can be caught in the web of ruthless traffickers. At every stage of the trip they are
vulnerable to sexual violence, physical abuse, as well as other forms of
exploitation, whether in the hands of the trafficker, the police, border
guards, or while in detention. In Pakistan,
some have been sold into slavery and prostitution, while many more survive as
illegal immigrants in extreme poverty in the squalor of the Karachi
slums. Others have spent many years in
jail, detained under the Pakistan Foreigners Act or under the Zina section of
the Hudood Ordinance.
Wherever
they are, Rohingya women are denied protection as well as assistance, and suffer
the worst human rights abuses.
Most
do not want to return to the brutal oppression in Burma. One woman in Karachi
told Images Asia: “Burma is my native country,
and I love my country. But in Burma we can’t even pray. Here, we only have one meal a day, but we can
live more peacefully.”
Mobina,
whose husband and brother were killed in Burma,
said: “I will never go back to Burma. Even if I need to survive on salt, I would
rather eat salt here!”
The
traffickers are only part of a wider social, cultural, political, economic
system of oppression, and it is this whole system that should be identified and
addressed, rather than just part of it.
Many women interviewed did not say they had faced major problems while
being trafficked to Pakistan. In some way, the trafficker is sometimes seen
as a saviour, and the Rohingyas need to use them to escape from their hell in Burma
and in Bangladesh. It is the oppression of the Rohingya women
that makes trafficking a better option than staying where they are, and in this
case the trafficker performs a needed service in facilitating the journey to
survival.
Rohingya
women are not only victims of traffickers, but also, as our field interviews
reveal, of:
-
the “system” of
nationality, manipulated by the 1982 Burmese Citizenship Law,
-
the Burmese military who
imposed on them a pattern of gross human rights violations, and a deliberate
policy of economic underdevelopment,
-
the socio-cultural and
religious background of their community,
-
the corrupt police and
border guards whether in Bangladesh,
India
or Pakistan,
-
the political situation
prevailing in the countries they fled to,
-
the legal system in Bangladesh
and Pakistan
which further victimised them, and,
-
UNHCR policies pursuing a
political rather than a human rights approach, and which are simply a
reflection of the international set-up.
The
UNHCR’s “voluntary” repatriation programme, while basic conditions for safe
return have not been achieved, has further alienated the Rohingyas. As a result they do not perceive that they
can rely on UNHCR for protection, whether in Bangladesh
or back in Burma. In dealing with the Rohingyas, UNHCR
implemented such policies regarding their protection -a priority in UNHCR’s
mandate-, that these have actually contributed to encourage trafficking to a
third country as the only alternative for survival.
Given
their situation of statelessness, and the fact that they have all fled their
country of origin, Burma,
because of well-founded fear of persecution, we believe that most Rohingyas
meet the criteria that should qualify them for refugee status.
Until
now, the voices of Rohingya women have been muffled, but with more exposure of
the situations they face, we hope their cries will no longer be left
unheard. Measures need to be implemented
urgently, and systems put in place to allow them to live in full human dignity,
including programs that address their basic needs. Their sufferings can no longer be
ignored. It is the international
community’s responsibility to ensure that their fundamental rights are
respected and guaranteed.
We
hope this report will create awareness of the particular circumstances of
Rohingya women, and will make the issue of their trafficking to Pakistan,
as well as of their protection, an emergency to be addressed.
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