Escaping the violence and the poverty of their homeland hundreds of improvished women from Myanmar some only teenagers, are being forced into marriage. Whilst most of them are forced, women agree to such marriages to escape imprisonment or worse at the hands of smugglers, others are tricked or coerced in a report in the New York Times.
One woman, Shahidah Yunus, 22, was in a camp in Thailand for two months when a deal for marriage came her way. Her family could not afford to pay the $1,260 that smugglers demanded so that she could escape to Malaysia. At the same time a stranger called in to say that he would offer to “free” her if she married him. In a phone call to her parents, they said that it would be better for the entire family, that if she was willing, to accept the offer.
She is not alone. Whilst this culture of forced marriage has been ongoing for some time, there has been a substantial increase.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has reported that a recent wave of asylum seekers from Bangladesh and Myanmar this year has caused an increase in “abductions and marriages arranged without the consent of women whose passage was ultimately paid for by prospective husbands.”
“Hundreds, if not thousands, of women and girls have been forced, sold or arranged for marriage via these trafficking corridors since 2012,” said Matthew Smith, the executive director of Fortify rights, an advocacy group in Bangkok that monitors Rohingya refugees. “For some families, it’s viewed as an imperative, as a survival mechanism.”
“The trafficking gangs are treating this as a rather lucrative business,” he said, adding that for the women and girls, “being sold or forced into marriage is the least-worst outcome, and that’s a problem.”
Ms. Yunus, who lives with her 38-year-old husband and 17 other Rohingyas on Penang Island, Malaysia, said she had didn’t have a choice after an uncle who had promised to pay for her journey failed to do so.
“I chose to marry my husband because the smugglers needed money to release me,” she said. “We were afraid of rape. It is better to marry a Rohingya man who can take care of us.”
Source: World Bulletin
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