This article is about a 12 year old girl whose village was burned to the ground and her life after that.
http://www.vice.com/read/rohingya-girls-for-sale-malaysias-forced-marriage-problem
Rashidah was just 12 years old when her life drastically changed. Her village was burned down, and the next three years after that burned her soul just like the outcome of her village. She was sold into slavery and sexually assaulted by Human Trafficking (the illegal movement of people, typically for the purposes of forced labor or commercial sexual exploitation). Now at the age of 15 Rashidah is already a mother and is also a victim of an ongoing issue that is, as the article states, “plaguing Malaysia’s sizable Rohingya population” which is the sale of young girls into forced marriage.
As I continued to read on I learned that the Rohingya people are on of the most persecuted people on earth. In 2012 anti-Muslim violence began causing an estimated total of 25,o00 people onto a boat to try and escape to Malaysia but many died on the journey. When they arrived in Malaysia the ration of men to women was very high so the demand for young girls grew and grew over time. Then since men overpopulated the area Human Traffickers began targeting young girls in camps in Myanmar trying to bribe them by offering a safe travel to Malaysia for a lower price, deceiving them fro their true intentions. Once they agreed the traffickers would then change the deal and the girls would then be in debt. After that they would be kept for not paying wages and then assaulted by the traffickers that promised safety to them.
Sharifah Shakirah, a Rohingya woman who works with the victims of forced marriages in Malaysia, said the situation is the symptom of a cruel system. Human traffickers routinely demand large sums of cash for passage to Malaysia, and some men, who are willing to pay for a bride in a place where few eligible Rohingya women exist, are supporting this extortion by paying the traffickers’ fees.
Sharifah works with these men and women and tries to teach them that this practice is wrong ,and should not continue. But the conversation would become difficult to that of men who just arrived and had little to no education.