Support for Myanmar Rohingya Women

Ms Saidiya Begum-22 was newly married. Not long after she was married the Burmese soldiers entered her village, captured and killed the men house after house, soon the army got inside her home grabbed her husband and shot him down in the fields, they later raped her right beside her husband's body.

When she opened her eyes in the next morning she got found herself lying on the field beside dead husband. This incident took place in 2012 in Myanmar and during this period Saidiyalost everything and everyone she loved. The 22-year-old in an effort to protect herself from the blood-thirsty Burmese army, left her country and crossed over into Bangladesh on a tiny boat past the Naf river, which borders the two countries and took refuge near the sea shore at Shaplapur.

Sadiya is just one of the many Rohingya women whose lives have been tattered, today between 1400-1800 Rohingya people live in Shaplapur where they are being discriminated day after day. With the help of other people from her community Saidiya Begum has a room in a slum, which she shares with her children. Nine months after the rape incident Saidiya had given birth Sanun age 3 years 8 months. However, Sanun is the war child; she did not know who her father is. Though Saidiya has managed to get away from Burma, she still hasn’t been able to protect herself from sex thirsty men. Saidiya is beautiful and young, so she became a target for a boat owner, who walks into her room and rapes her when all the Rohingya men are out fishing at night. " At night when the all our men go fishing in the bay, the owner of the boat comes and forcibly enter my room and rapes me." It is regular phenomenon and as a result of it she got pregnant and gave birth 2 other Children, youngest one is just 9 months old.

The Rohingya community has no working rights in Bangladesh. But they need to work to stay alive as the relief fund they are provided with by The government and the United Nations is barely enough, so they fall prey to low wages and are forced to work long hours for less pay. They are therefore forced to do multiple severely low paying jobs and their settlements are usually found near the coastal areas of the Bay of Bengal. As the only job they get is fishing, while the women work as maidservants.

This community does not own boats and are only paid for their labor, so they don’t earn much as the boat owners know that these men have no working rights in Bangladesh. The boat owners usually pay them around $2 -$3 per day. The fishermen usually go to the sea at midnight or during early morning hours and return in the evening. The boat owners’ come to the Rohingya slums in the middle of the night and wake them up and force them to go fishing.