Tag Archives: Child Abuse

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)

 

‘Bad Blood’ fears fuel abuse of children of Boko Haram rape

By Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani

ABUJA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Having been kidnapped by Boko Haram, held for almost a year, and raped by several militants, 28-year-old Aisha Umar could have been forgiven for believing her ordeal was over when she escaped and returned to her hometown in northeast Nigeria last year.

But the mother-of-four was forced to flee her home in the town of Gwoza a fortnight ago when a man threatened to murder her two-year-old boy Mohammed, the son of a Boko Haram fighter.

“He told me that if I didn’t take the child away, he would buy petrol and set the boy on fire until he burned to ashes,” Umar told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Madagali, 22 km (14 miles) away, where she now lives with her brother.

The man, who saw Boko Haram kill three of his children, was one of many people in Gwoza who made it clear to Umar that her son was not welcome in the community since their return home.

“People didn’t want to play with the child … they called him Boko Haram child,” Umar said, adding that she received the most abuse from those who had lost relatives to Boko Haram.

Women who are former Boko Haram captives, and their children born out of rape, face mistrust and persecution when they return home, according to a report by peacebuilding group International Alert and the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF.

Many people fear those held by the Islamist militant group have been radicalized and may recruit others when they return home, said the report, which was published earlier this year.

More than 2,000 women and girls have been abducted by Boko Haram since 2012, many of whom have been raped, trained to fight, or used as suicide bombers, according to the report.

Joint operations between Nigeria and neighboring countries succeeded in driving Boko Haram from many of its strongholds last year but the Islamists have stepped up cross-border attacks and suicide bombings, many of them carried out by young girls.

“There is a belief that the blood of the father will always run in a child’s veins and therefore that these children will eventually turn on their families and communities,” said Rachel Harvey, chief of child protection for UNICEF in Nigeria.

“BOKO HARAM CHILD”

Umar was kidnapped in August 2014 by Boko Haram militants who shot her husband in the head before taking her into Sambisa Forest, a vast colonial-era game reserve where the militants hide in secluded camps to avoid the Nigerian military.

Umar believes the militant to whom she was married is the father of her two-year-old son. He was named Mohammed Yusuf after Boko Haram’s founder, who died in police custody in 2009.

When she returned home to Gwoza last year and learned that her three children from her murdered husband had been taken in by a neighbor, the family were overjoyed to be reunited.

“But people started telling them that their brother was a Boko Haram child,” she said, adding that the three children became increasingly reluctant to play with Mohammed.

“My oldest daughter told me: ‘Mummy, please, take this child to his father and come back to us’.”

Despite moving to Madagali in Adamawa state, Umar is facing fresh stigma as people become aware of her son’s heritage.

Her relatives do not want to touch Mohammed while people point at her in public and keep their distance, Umar said.

Recalling how she secretly plotted her escape from Sambisa with dozens of other women, Umar talks of how she carefully strapped her toddler to her back as she fled to keep him safe.

Yet the abuse she has suffered since escaping Boko Haram has pushed her to breaking point.

“If I had someone to take this child away from me, I would welcome the idea.”

(Reporting By Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, Additional Reporting and Writing by Kieran Guilbert, Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)

Woman Who Put Newborn In Toilet Tank Sentenced To Life

A Pennsylvania woman will spend the rest of her life in prison after being sentenced in connection to the killing of her newborn child.

Amanda Hein, 26, had gone to a bar in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania last August to watch a pay-per-view wrestling event with three men.  She went into labor and gave birth during the event in the women’s bathroom.  She then wrapped the newborn in a plastic bag, placed it in the toilet’s tank, went outside for a cigarette and then returned to watch the wrestling event.

The baby was found the next day when the cleaning crew could not flush the toilet.  The county medical examiner says the child was born alive and suffocated in the plastic bag.

She had pleaded guilty to murder as part of a plea deal last month but it was up to a jury to decide if it was pre-meditated first-degree murder or third-degree murder.  The jury went with first-degree which called for a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

Hein’s defense attorneys claimed that her actions were spur-of-the-moment out of shock because she did not know she was pregnant.

Bus Stop Ads In Spain Promote Child Pornography

A poster that promoted what it termed “abuse free” child pornography has been removed from a bus stop outside a major cathedral in Barcelona, Spain.

The advertising firm that manages the bus stops said the poster promoted “abuse-free child pornography,” bearing the word “freedom” in large letters over a picture of a half dressed underage girl.

The ad asked people to send them photos of themselves as children for posting on a website that promoted what they termed the abuse free images.

A spokesman for the advertising agency said the ad was placed inside one of the company’s glass display cases that can only be opened by employees of the company.  The company did not say who purchased the ad or who placed the posters in the display case near the Sagrada Familiia cathedral.

No one knows how long the poster was displayed before a local reporter called city council officials about the poster’s content.  The council had to ask the ad agency to remove the poster.

Woman Arrested For Stun Gunning Children

A Florida woman is under arrest after she reportedly used stun guns to punish children under her care.

Letina Smith, 41, was arrested after three children under 9-years-old told police that she had used a “pink, rectangle shaped” machine with “two points of electricity”on them when she said they misbehaved.

Investigators say they were able to interview the children after being alerted by officials at Sunrise Elementary School.

Officials could not say what the relationship is with the children. She was jailed on just $3,000 bond.

Father Arrested After Leaving Baby In Locked Car

A man who was shopping at a Best Buy on Thanksgiving night was arrested after police found his baby locked in his car.

Haider Darwash, 34, was arrested by Florida Highway Patrol officers after returning to his car with his “Black Friday” purchases.

Police say that Trooper Edy Rivera was walking through the parking lot around 5:30 p.m. on Thanksgiving night when he noticed an infant strapped into his car seat in the vacant car.  The trooper went into the Best Buy to try and find the vehicle’s owner but no one responded to the officer’s pleas.

He then went outside, broke the car’s window and rescued the baby.  Officials say the baby appeared lethargic but was in good condition.

Darwash told the officers he thought his wife had the baby.  She was reportedly at a different store in the shopping complex waiting for doors to open for their “Black Friday” specials. He was booked into jail on felony child neglect charges.

 

Teen Girls Imprisoned In Their Home For Two Years

A Tucson couple is behind bars facing criminal charges related to keeping three teen girls prisoners inside the home for over two years.

Fernando and Sophia Richter are facing kidnapping and child abuse charges for their actions against the girls aged 17, 13 and 12.

Police say the two younger girls were able to escape through their bedroom window and reach a neighbor’s house for help.  The girls had not seen their sister in two years because they were imprisoned in separate rooms so they didn’t even know if she was still alive.

The police report says the girls were kept in the rooms where the ducts had been covered by tape and doors and windows sealed with towels to keep sound inside.  They were subjected to music or the sound of static at high volume 24 hours a day.  The volume of the music was so high the 17-year-old girl could not even hear the police raiding the home until they opened the bedroom door.

The girls told police they received one meal a day that was usually a noodle goulash.  They had not been allowed to bathe in six months and because the parents would not let them out to use the bathroom had to use bags kept in closets.  The rooms also had video surveillance where they were recorded 24 hours a day.

Stepmother Of Girl Who Bullied Another Teen Into Suicide Arrested For Abuse

The stepmother of a 14-year-old girl who was arrested on charges related to bullying another teen into suicide has been arrested on six counts related to abuse.

Vivian Vosburg, 30, is facing charges related to a video posted on Facebook showing her punching two teenage boys. The Polk County Florida Sheriff’s Office said Vosburg is charged with two counts of child abuse with bodily harm and four counts of child neglect with great harm.

Vosburg’s stepdaughter, 14-year-old Guadalupe Shaw, is charged along with a 12-year-old girl with felony aggravated stalking in the suicide death of 12-year-old Rebecca Sedwick. The two girls reportedly harassed Sedwick in person and online because the girl had dated a boy that Shaw had once dated. Sedwick committed suicide by jumping from the top of a concrete silo on September 9th.

While the charges against Vosburg are not related to the bullying incident with Shaw, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd believes the environment created in Vosburg’s home contributed to the 14-year-old’s depraved mindset.

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Judd said at a press conference.