'I feel trapped': Scores of underage Rohingya girls forced into abusive marriages in Malaysia
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) In a bedroom in Malaysia that has become a prison, the 14-year-old girl wipes away tears as she sits cross-legged on the concrete floor. It is here, she says, where her 35-year-old husband rapes her nearly every night.
Last year, the Rohingya girl sacrificed herself to save her family, embarking on a terrifying journey from her homeland of Myanmar to a country she had never seen, to marry a man she had never met.
It wasnt her choice. None of this was. Not the decision to leave behind everything she knew, nor the arranged marriage for which she was not ready.
But her family, she says, was impoverished, hungry and terrified of Myanmars military, which unleashed a series of sweeping attacks against the countrys Rohingya Muslim minority in 2017. In desperation, a neighbor found a man in Malaysia who would pay the 18,000 ringgit ($3,800) fee for the girls passage and after she married him send money to her parents and three little siblings for food.
https://apnews.com/article/rohingya-refugees-bangladesh-myanmar-malaysia-migration-f481e725f97d1b004a474e5facb10144