After Husaina’s 20-year-old son fled poverty and discrimination in Myanmar’s Rakhine State by boat, she heard nothing from him for seven months.
Then, in a shocking phone call, she was told the young Rohingya Muslim was in the hands of people smugglers in Thailand, and had fallen severely ill. The only way for him to be released was to somehow find the money to pay a ransom.
“The man said: ‘If you don’t pay money, he will die… I was so upset. How did he get into the hands of the brokers? How did he become so ill?’” she said, her eyes downcast while sitting in her dank and crumbling one-room temporary home in Thet KelPyin displacement camp, a few kilometres outside Sittwe.
They found an employer in Malaysia willing to pay about $1,600 in exchange for Mamed Rohim’s labour. That was over a year ago and Rohim is still working to repay the debt. He only manages to send over about $50 every two to three months, which the family uses to repay their own debts. (Courtesy of Mizzima)
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