II. On Land: Abuses at Human-Trafficking Camps and Houses in Thailand and Malaysia
58
Fortify Rights also spoke to Rohingya women who faced threats from traffickers or were sold by
traffickers in the human-trafficking camp. “Naw Begum,” 40, described how traffickers threatened
to marry her when she was confined in a human-trafficking camp in 2014: “One dallal said that if
we couldn’t give money, he would take me to be his wife. He said on the phone [to my son], ‘If you
cannot give money, I will take her.’”211
The woman’s son “Jabar,” 23, previously fled Myanmar in 2007 and was living in Bangkok as a roti seller
in 2014.212 He arranged for his mother, sister, and two brothers to travel to Thailand, initially paying
US$250 (870 Malaysian Ringgit) for the four family members to flee Rakhine State. Jabar then paid
another 155,000 Thai Baht (US$4,840; 1,385 Malaysian Ringgit) to obtain their release as well as the
release of a 16-year-old Rohingya girl from the human-trafficking camp.213 Jabar’s mother arranged
for Jabar to purchase the girl after meeting and caring for her in the human-trafficking camp.
Jabar told Fortify Rights how he arranged for the payment of his four family members and the young
girl, whom he later married, saying:
I borrowed the money from an Indian [man] and from him [pointing to nearby Rohingya
businessman]. I have to pay a monthly interest payment of 10,000 Thai Baht (US$312; 1,080
Malaysian Ringgit) to the Indian man. The Indian man knows what the money he lent me was
used for. I explained to him about my family. I call him my father and humbly asked him for
help, and he agreed to help.214
Like the girl purchased by Jabar, traffickers sold “Noor Wai,” 15, to a young Rohingya man in Malaysia
for 3,500 Malaysian Ringgit (approximately US$1,000) in October 2014.
Noor Wai fled her home in Sittwe Town in Myanmar’s Rakhine State after the Myanmar security
forces and extremists razed her house and forced her and her family into an internment camp in
2012.215 She described to Fortify Rights her reasons for fleeing:
I was living in the [Myanmar internment] camps, and it was very difficult, and I had a very
hard time, and that’s why I realized I had to leave the country . . . I wanted to leave Rakhine
State because of hunger. I was in Ba Du Ba [internment] camp. The [U.N. World Food Program]
provided for one person only a cup of rice and a little oil. We also had only half rations
because we needed the rest to buy other things, like fuel. When I knew people were leaving
for Malaysia from the camps, I asked them what to do. When I decided to go, there were four
brokers . . . There was one man named [redacted] in Sittwe. He helped me get on the boat. He
was a dallal.216
Although the traffickers promised Noor Wai that they would bring her to Malaysia, she arrived in
Thailand after spending seven days on the ship in Myanmar waiting for it to depart and 12 days at sea:
We were supposed to be going to Malaysia, not Thailand. When I got off the boat [near Ranong,
Thailand], [the traffickers] put me in a car, and after an eight-hour drive, we reached the
mountain area. The first time I arrived in the [human-trafficking] camp, it was empty. There
were no people there.217
211 Fortify Rights interview with #49, Bangkok, Thailand, September 23, 2014.
212 Fortify Rights interview with #47, Bangkok, Thailand, September 23, 2014. See, Chapter IV. “Testimony Suggesting
Official Complicity in Human Trafficking.”
213 Ibid.
214 Ibid.
215 She told Fortify Rights: “My house was burned down and so all the people went to the camp. It was about three years
ago. [Myanmar riot police] started shooting, and then we all went out of our homes and went to the water—there was
a lot of water there—and then more [Rakhine] people came to our village and burned the houses. They used petrol to
burn the houses.” Fortify Rights interview with #69, Penang State, Malaysia, October 1, 2014.
216 Ibid.
217 Ibid.