Asia shares
world-wide shame

Ahamed Hafeesa, a pretty 14-year-old Rohingya girl, is married to a 49-year-old Malaysian, who suffers from a medical condition that has left him constantly drooling and with weak limbs.

They live in a small village in a remote part of Malaysia.

“Her eyes twinkle like those of a cat. So beautiful. But her face is so sad,” said a Rohingya woman who interacted with her while volunteering as a translator for an NGO in Hafeesa’s village.

Hafeesa (name changed) was brought from Myanmar by an agent a couple of years ago. He assured her parents that she would get a “good job” in Malaysia.

Instead, Hafeesa was married off to a much older man who promised to send an undisclosed sum of money every month to her parents, the translator told UCA News on the condition her name was not disclosed.

She recalled having first met Hafeesa in March 2023 while in the village for a project

Hafeesa is one of dozens of girls trafficked to Malaysia from Myanmar or the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh.

They are either forced into the sex trade or sold as child brides by agents who are part of a thriving network of international crime syndicates.

“There’s nothing anyone can do for her now because she is legally married,” the Rohingya volunteer said.

In Kelantan, the far-flung state in the northeast of Peninsular Malaysia, “these things are acceptable” she added.

An ethnic Rohingya refugee girl from Myanmar residing in Malaysia smiles as she attends a class at their community school in Ampang in the suburbs of Kuala Lumpur on May 20, 2015.  (Photo: AFP)

No escape route

In Bangladesh alone, close to one million Rohingya refugees live in inhuman conditions in 33 highly congested camps after fleeing their violence-hit villages in Myanmar.

They are unable to move out freely and are denied the right to work.

Hence, many of them, including women and children, seek illegal routes to somehow reach neighboring countries and end up getting trapped by trafficking syndicates, rights groups say.

Some 140,000 Rohingya people have been confined to camps in central Rakhine State in Myanmar since 2012 when the violence escalated, according to rights group Human Rights Watch.

Overall, around 600,000 Rohingya live under apartheid conditions, facing persecution and effective imprisonment, forcing them to look for escape routes.

When Hafeesa was asked why she didn’t call her parents back home and tell them what was happening to her or try to escape, she said she was “scared.”

She is more worried about what would happen to her parents, as it would be “shameful” for them to have their daughter in this situation.

“She says she’s willing to bear the hardship because her family at least gets some money every month,” the translator said.

A girl from the Malaysian indigenous Mah Meri community is seen here before heading to the sea during the "Puja Pantai" ritual, a thanksgiving ritual praying to the spirits of the seas, in Pulau Carey on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur on Feb. 9, 2019. (Photo: AFP)

Legally valid child brides

In Malaysia, child marriage is practiced by all communities — Muslims, non-Muslims, indigenous, and refugees, according to a 2018 UNICEF-commissioned study.

Child marriage continues despite public opposition because poverty-stricken families see it as a viable option to prevent girls becoming pregnant out of wedlock.

“It is considered the norm in some parts of Malaysia and not a crime. It’s been normalized, and this is the challenge in enacting laws to ban child marriage,” said Sheila Devi Michael, who is researching child trafficking.

Michael, head of the Department of International and Strategic Studies at the Universiti Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, said a trafficked child merely saying she was “not forced into marriage” does not make it a crime of trafficking.

“It is because there is an element of exploitation. A child does not understand what family life constitutes,” she told UCA News.

International conventions see child marriage as forced marriage and forced marriage as a form of human trafficking.

A child’s consent to marry is invalid because of the child’s inability to make a fully informed decision to marry, according to the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons.

However, in Malaysia, the legal minimum age someone can marry for non-Muslims is 18 for both sexes, while for Muslims, it is 18 for boys and 16 for girls.

Moreover, Muslim girls below 16 can get married with consent from the sharia court in their respective states.

Muslim marriages are governed by state Islamic enactments and not federal law. The Child Protection Act 2001, a federal law, covers multiple matters but does not ban child marriage.

Since the legal age for girls to marry in Malaysia is 16, a high percentage of Muslim girls under 18 are married, according to a UNICEF study.

Of the 1,500 children who were married in Malaysia in 2018, at least 74 percent were Muslim girls, it said.

A Rohingya refugee girl living in Malaysia looks on as others slaughter a cow during the Eid al-Adha festival in Kuala Lumpur on July 10, 2022. (Photo: AFP)

Fair skin preferred

Trafficking agents typically scout around the camps in Bangladesh or Myanmar looking for pretty, fair-skinned girls aged 11 or 12. They make an offer to the parents, make an initial payment, and bring the girls to Malaysia, said the Rohingya translator who tours several villages as part of her work.

“There have been many cases where receiving agents in Malaysia raped these girls before transporting them to remote parts of the country to marry them off to rich old men,” she said.

“The girls just keep quiet and accept the situation, thinking they are helping their parents financially,” she added.

Many such Rohingya and Bangladeshi child brides are found in remote parts of Malaysia.

“It’s easier to pick them from the camps because no one is going to report to authorities unlike in towns where people might call the police if they suspect something wrong,” the translator explained.

She recalled meeting a 17-year-old Bangladeshi girl early this year.

“The agent took her to a house where he raped her. When she got pregnant, he gave her a traditional herbal concoction, which killed the fetus but it remained in her womb for a week.”

The agent went missing, and no one was there to take her to the hospital. The girl cried out for help until the neighbors noticed and called the police, who took her to a hospital and then to a shelter home.

“When the police found her, she couldn’t walk. Her waist and legs looked deformed. She was mentally affected,” said the translator who acted as an interpreter for the police.

“We can never solve this problem. I get really angry...,” she said but did not complete her sentence.

People walk with their luggage towards Malaysia, as seen from Sungai Kolok district in southern Thailand's Narathiwat province on June 1, 2022, after Malaysia and Thailand re-opened their land borders following the loosening of restrictions related to the Covid-19 coronavirus. (Photo: AFP)

Malaysia as transit point

The Malaysian government’s Anti-Trafficking in Persons and Anti-Smuggling of Migrants Council said last November that they had rescued 67 children who were trafficked to Malaysia in the past five years. Among them were those trafficked to work as street beggars and sellers, and babies trafficked to be sold.

Malaysia is not just a receiving country but also a transit point. Last year the immigration department exposed a child trafficking syndicate that was bringing in children from Sri Lanka and fraudulently obtaining travel documents for these children before sending them to clients in Europe.

The syndicate was paid between €30,000 and €50,000 (RM145,906 to RM243,177) for each child who got a passport and was escorted to Europe. It is not known what the children were being trafficked for.

Agents also get their child brides from Rohingya asylum-seekers in Bangladesh and Indonesia, offering false promises of help and bringing them to Malaysia and exploiting them, according to the 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report on Malaysia.

“Corruption and official complicity in trafficking crimes remained significant concerns, inhibiting law enforcement action,” said the report, referring to agents as traffickers.

Michael said underage girls are also brought into Malaysia from the Mekong region of Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia and Myanmar, to work on fishing boats, but are sold to brothels, and as child brides to local men.

In 2018, two stories of local child brides caused much furor with calls to ban child marriage.

One was of an 11-year-old Thai girl who became the third wife of a 41-year-old rubber tapper, and the other of a 15-year-old Malaysian girl who became the second wife of a man aged 44. Both the cases were in Kelantan.

A girl attends online studies set up from a commercial stall of her parents inside a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur on March 4, 2021 while many schools conduct remote learning due to Covid-19 coronavirus. (Photo: AFP)

Varied forms of child exploitation

Michael said the thriving tourism industry in Malaysia is also to blame for increasing human trafficking. Children are in demand at entertainment or leisure outlets like resorts, karaoke lounges, spas, and such facilities. They are also trafficked for commercial sex work, she said.

“Some of these children look mature for their age, so no one suspects anything. They may be 15 or 16,” she explained.

In Sabah, there are a sizable number of stateless children who are victims of trafficking. “They are exploited as forced laborers on palm oil plantations,” she added.

Malaysia has had three five-year plans to tackle human trafficking since 2010. The timeline for the third one ends next year.

But not much progress has been achieved.

Nothing short of a robust political will and equally strong enforcement will help make some dent in human trafficking, rights activists believe.