Exclusive: $6 for 38 days work: Child exploitation rife in Rohingya camps

Azimul Hasan, 10, a Rohingya refugee boy, serves plates at a roadside hotel where he works at Jamtoli, close to Palong Khali camp, near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, November 12, 2017.

By Tom Allard and Tommy Wilkes

COX’S BAZAR/KUTUPALONG, Bangladesh (Reuters) – Rohingya refugee children from Myanmar are working punishing hours for paltry pay in Bangladesh, with some suffering beatings and sexual assault, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has found.

Independent reporting by Reuters corroborated some of the findings.

The results of a probe by the IOM into exploitation and trafficking in Bangladesh’s refugee camps, which Reuters reviewed on an exclusive basis, also documented accounts of Rohingya girls as young as 11 getting married, and parents saying the unions would provide protection and economic advancement.

About 450,000 children, or 55 percent of the refugee population, live in teeming settlements near the border with Myanmar after fleeing the destruction of villages and alleged murder, looting and rape by security forces and Buddhist mobs.

Afjurul Hoque Tutul, additional superintendent of police in Cox’s Bazar, near where the camps are based, said 11 checkpoints had been set up that would help prevent children from leaving.

“If any Rohingya child is found working, then the owners will be punished,” he said.

Most of the refugees have arrived in the past two and a half months after attacks on about 30 security posts by Rohingya rebels met a ferocious response from Myanmar’s military.

Described by the United Nations human rights commissioner Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”, Myanmar’s government counters that its actions are a proportionate response to attacks by Rohingya “terrorists”.

The IOM’s findings, based on discussions with groups of long-term residents and recent arrivals, and separate interviews by Reuters, show life in the refugee camps is hardly better than it is in Myanmar for Rohingya children.

The IOM said children were targeted by labor agents and encouraged to work by their destitute parents amid widespread malnutrition and poverty in the camps. Education opportunities are limited for children beyond Grade 3.

Azimul Hasan, 10, a Rohingya refugee boy, stands inside a roadside hotel where he works at Jamtoli, close to Palong Khali camp, near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, November 12, 2017.

Azimul Hasan, 10, a Rohingya refugee boy, stands inside a roadside hotel where he works at Jamtoli, close to Palong Khali camp, near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, November 12, 2017. REUTERS/Navesh Chitrakar

Rohingya boys and girls as young as seven years old were confirmed working outside the settlements, according to the findings.

Boys work on farms, construction sites and fishing boats, as well as in tea shops and as rickshaw drivers, the IOM and Rohingya residents in the camp reported.

Girls typically work as maids and nannies for Bangladeshi families, either in the nearby resort town of Cox’s Bazar or in Chittagong, Bangladesh’s second-largest city, about 150 km (100 miles) from the camps.

One Rohingya parent, who asked not to be identified because she feared reprisals, told Reuters her 14-year-old daughter had been working in Chittagong as a maid but fled her employers.

When she returned to the camp, she was unable to walk, her mother said, adding that her daughter’s Bangladeshi employers had physically and sexually assaulted her.

“The husband was an alcoholic and he would come to her bedroom at night and rape her. He did it six or seven times,” the mother said. “They gave us no money. Nothing.”

The account could not be independently verified by Reuters but was similar to others recorded by the IOM.

Most interviewees said female Rohingya refugees “experienced sexual harassment, rape and being forced to marry the person who raped her”, the IOM said.

A 12 year old Rohingya girl who worked as domestic help in a house in Bangladesh, looks out the window at an undisclosed location near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, November 8, 2017.

A 12 year old Rohingya girl who worked as domestic help in a house in Bangladesh, looks out the window at an undisclosed location near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, November 8, 2017. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain

PAID A PITTANCE, IF AT ALL

Across Bangladesh’s refugee settlements, Reuters saw children wandering muddy lanes alone and aimlessly, or sitting listlessly outside tents. Many children begged along roadsides.

The Inter Sector Coordination Group, which oversees UN agencies and charities, said this month it had documented 2,462 unaccompanied and separated children in the camps. The actual number was “likely to be far higher”, it said.

A preliminary survey by the UNHCR and Bangladesh’s Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commission has found that 5 percent of households – or 3,576 families – were headed by a child.

Reuters interviewed seven families who sent their children to work. All reported terrible working conditions, low wages or abuse.

Muhammad Zubair, dressed in a dirty football shirt, his small stature belying his stated age of 12 years old, said he was offered 250 taka per day but ended up with only 500 taka ($6) for 38 days work building roads. His mother said he was 14 years old.

“It was hard work, laying bricks on the road,” he said, squatting in the doorway of his mud hut in the Kutupalong camp. He said he was verbally abused by his employers when he asked for more money and was told to leave. He declined to provide their identities.

Zubair then took a job in a tea shop for a month, putting in two shifts per day from 6am to past midnight, broken by a four-hour rest period in the afternoon.

He said he wasn’t allowed to leave the shop and was only permitted to speak to his parents by phone once.

“When I wasn’t paid, I escaped,” he said. “I was frightened because I thought the owner, the master, would come here with other people and take me again.”

 

FORCED MARRIAGE

Many parents also pressure their daughters to marry early, for protection and for financial stability, according to the IOM findings. Some child brides are as young as 11, the IOM said.

But many women only became “second wives,” the IOM said. Second wives are frequently divorced quickly and “abandoned without any further economic support”.

Kateryna Ardanyan, an IOM anti-trafficking specialist, said exploitation had become “normalized” in the camps.

“Human traffickers usually adapt faster to the situation than any other response mechanism can. It’s very important we try to do prevention.” Ardanyan said.

“Funding dedicated to protecting Rohingya men, women and children from exploitation and abuse is urgently needed.”

 

(Reporting by Tom Allard and Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Philip McClellan)

 

Iraqi troops battle Islamic State inside Mosul

Tribal fighters walk as fire and smoke rises from oil wells, set ablaze by Islamic State militants before IS militants fled the oil-producing region of Qayyara, Iraq,

By Stephen Kalin and Dominic Evans

EAST OF MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi forces battled Islamic State fighters on the eastern edge of Mosul on Tuesday as the two-week campaign to recapture the jihadists’ last main bastion in Iraq entered a new phase of urban warfare.

Artillery and air strikes pounded the city, still home to 1.5 million people, and residents of the eastern neighborhood of al-Quds said the ultra-hardline Sunni militants had resorted to street fighting to try to hold the army back.

Soldiers of the elite Counter Terrorism Service (CST) also entered the state television station in Mosul on Tuesday, the first capture of an important building in the Islamic State-held city since the start of the offensive about two weeks ago, the force commander, Lieutenant-General Talib Shaghati, said.

“This is a good sign for the people of Mosul because the battle to liberate Mosul has effectively begun,” Shaghati said.

Iraqi troops, security forces, Shi’ite militias and Kurdish peshmerga have been advancing on several fronts toward Mosul, backed by U.S.-led troops and air forces. Special forces units sweeping in from the east have made fastest progress.

“We are currently fighting battles on the eastern outskirts of Mosul,” CTS Lieutenant-General Abdul Wahab al-Saidi said. “The pressure is on all sides of the city to facilitate entry to the city center.”

He said CTS forces had cleared Islamic State fighters from most of the eastern district of Kokjali, close to al-Quds, on Tuesday, “so now we are inside the district of Mosul”.

Blackish grey smoke hung in the air east of the Islamists’ stronghold and the regular sound of outgoing artillery fire could be heard, said a Reuters reporter near Bazwaia, about five km (three miles) east of Mosul.

Inside the city, residents speaking to Reuters by telephone said they heard the sounds of heavy clashes since dawn.

One inhabitant of al-Quds district at the city’s eastern entrance said bullets were fizzing past and hitting the walls of houses, describing the explosions as “deafening and frightening”. Many people in the area have stayed indoors for the last two days.

“We can see Daesh (Islamic State) fighters firing towards the Iraqi forces and moving in cars between the alleys of the neighborhood. It’s street fighting.”

One witness said he saw nine cars, laden with families and furniture, heading from the eastern half of the to the west bank of the Tigris River to escape the encroaching frontline.

Away from the eastern fringe of the city, however, traffic was relatively normal, markets were open, and Islamic State fighters were patrolling as usual.

“CHOP THE SNAKE’S HEAD”

Mosul is many times bigger than any other city held by Islamic State in Iraq or Syria. Its recapture would mark the collapse of the Iraqi wing of the caliphate which it declared in parts of both countries two years ago, although the hardline Sunni militants have recovered from other setbacks in Iraq.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Monday that Iraqi forces were trying to close off all escape routes for the several thousand Islamic State fighters inside Mosul.

“God willing, we will chop off the snake’s head,” Abadi, wearing military fatigues, told state television. “They have no escape, they either die or surrender.”

Commanders have warned that the fight for Mosul, which could be the toughest of the decade-long turmoil since the U.S. invasion which overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003, is likely to last for months.

The United Nations has said the Mosul offensive could also trigger a humanitarian crisis and a possible refugee exodus if the civilians inside in Mosul seek to escape, with up to 1 million people fleeing in a worst-case scenario.

The International Organisation for Migration said that nearly 18,000 people have been displaced since the start of the campaign on Oct. 17, excluding thousands of villagers who were forced back into Mosul by retreating jihadists who used them as human shields.

U.N. human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said Islamic State fighters tried to force another 25,000 civilians from a town south of Mosul back toward the city on Monday. Most of the trucks carrying them turned back under pressure from patrolling aircraft, she said.

Not all those heading back were doing so under duress from the militants, according to Mosul residents who said people were streaming in from the south as military operations edged closer to the city.

Most came without any belongings, though some brought sheep and a few camels into the city, they said.

In Bazwaia, CTS guards told Reuters that a suicide car bomber tried to attack their position early on Tuesday, but they halted it with machinegun fire. Rubble and parts of the attacker’s body could still be seen by a nearby berm.

As well as the suicide attacks, the Islamic State militants have slowed the army’s advance with snipers, mortar fire, roadside bombs and booby traps inside abandoned buildings.

In Bazwaia, recaptured by Iraqi troops a day earlier, about a dozen civilians could be seen coming out of the village, waving white flags and bringing with them their livestock — about 200 sheep and a few cows and donkeys.

A man who just fled Bazwaia village carries a white flag as he arrives at a special forces checkpoint, east of Mosul, Iraq,

A man who just fled Bazwaia village carries a white flag as he arrives at a special forces checkpoint, east of Mosul, Iraq, November 1, 2016. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra

Saidi, the CTS officer, said 500 civilians had already been moved from Bazwaia to a camp for displaced people further away from the frontline.

“We expect to encounter more civilians as we push through the city,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Saif Hameed and Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad and Tom Miles in Geneva, Writing by Dominic Evans in Baghdad, Editing by Angus MacSwan)