Refugee women unprotected against violence
Physical and emotional abuse happens within their families
Rolling up the sleeves of her long black robe to reveal a scar from a cigarette burn on her arm, refugee Sara shows how her husband pressed a pillow over her face to shut her up when he attacked her. The abuse began as soon as they got married in 2009, just a year after Sara had fled her home in Myanmar, where her fellow Rohingya - an ethnic Muslim minority - are shunned and persecuted in the Buddhist-majority nation.
She landed in Malaysia and married her husband, a 42-year-old Rohingya man, the following year. “I wanted to be a good wife but he was always very angry. He would not allow me to go out, he would expect me to have all the food ready, and prepare him a hot towel and a glass of water when he gets home. He would hit me if he was not happy. If I cried, he covered my mouth with a pillow so our neighbors could not hear me,” said Sara, who used a pseudonym for fear of retaliation from her husband.
The 30-year-old eventually escaped her home with her six-year-old son and the pair has been living for five months in a shelter run by an organization that supports migrant workers and refugees. Stories like Sara’s are not unusual among the refugee community in Malaysia, which hosts over 150,000 refugees and asylum seekers, the majority of them from Myanmar and some of whom have lived in the country for over a decade. Rights groups say uncertainty over their future and years of living in a host country where they are considered illegal migrants have taken a toll on their mental health, and driven up cases of domestic violence among refugee families.
‘Silent in Fear’
Kuala Lumpur-based Tenaganita, a campaign group which works with refugees, said there was “extensive” gender-based violence against refugee women in Malaysia. Since last year, the group has been working with the University of Colorado in the United States to conduct a twoyear survey among some 500 Rohingya families in Malaysia on the prevalence of gender-based violence.
Tenaganita’s executive director, Glorene Das, said although the survey is still underway, early indications showed both male and female respondents acknowledged physical and emotional abuse happened within their families. “Not being able to resettle or taking a long time adds stress to the family,” Das told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Ultimately husbands or the male family members tend to take it out on their female partners.”
She added that the fact refugees are not recognized by the government also means that victims of violence have no legal avenue to turn to when they want to seek recourse. “Their deemed ‘illegality’ renders the women silent in fear,” Das said. While the refugees are recognized by the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR, Malaysia is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, which means all refugees are viewed as illegal migrants awaiting resettlement in a third country. The country also does not extend protection, job opportunities or education to them, leaving many refugees end up finding odd jobs in the informal sectors as cleaners, waiters or construction workers.