Innocent symbol of their pain
Infants a reminder of the horrors Rohingya rape victims faced
( Bangladesh): Tucked away in the shadows of her family’s bamboo shelter, the girl hid from the world.
She was 13, and she was petrified. Two months earlier, soldiers had broken into her home back in Myanmar and raped her, an attack that drove her and her terrified family over the border to Bangladesh.
For the girl, a Rohingya Muslim who agreed to be identified by her first initial, A, the pregnancy was a prison she was desperate to escape.
The rape itself had destroyed her innocence. But carrying the baby of a Buddhist soldier could destroy her life.
More than 10 months have passed since Myanmar’s security forces launched a sweeping campaign of rape and other brutalities against the Rohingya, and the babies conceived during those assaults have been born.
For many of their mothers, the births have been tinged with fear – not only because the infants are reminders of the horrors they survived, but because their community often views rape as shameful, and bearing a baby conceived by Buddhists as sacrilege.
Theirs is a misery spoken of only in murmurs. Some ended their pregnancies early by taking cheap abortion pills available throughout the camps. Others agonised over whether to give their unloved babies away.
One woman was so worried about her neighbours discovering her pregnancy that she suffered silently through labour in her shelter, stuffing a scarf in her mouth to swallow her screams.
In Bangladesh’s overcrowded refugee camps, A knew that hiding her pregnancy would be difficult and hiding a wailing newborn impossible. She worried that giving birth to this child would leave her so tainted that no man would ever want her as his wife. Her mother took her to a clinic for an abortion.
But A was so frightened by the doctor’s description of possible side effects that she thought she would die. There was nothing to do but wait with dread for the baby who symbolised the pain of an entire people to arrive.
For the women who became pregnant during last year’s wave of attacks in Myanmar, to speak the truth is to risk losing everything.
Because of that, no one knows how many rape survivors have given birth. But given the vastness of the sexual violence, relief groups had braced for a spike in deliveries and scores of abandoned babies.
Aid workers suspected that many women had tried to hide their pregnancies, avoiding doctors.
Yet sprinkled throughout the camps, you will find women who have grown weary of the silence.
The monsoon rains thundering down on the roof of A’s shelter threaten to drown out her words.
Her voice still has a childlike softness, and when she speaks of the soldiers who raped her, it fades to a whisper.
Already, several men once interested in marrying her have walked away when they’ve learned about the attack. And yet, with her parents’ blessing, she leans in close to share her story.
“I want justice,” she says. “That’s why I’m talking to you.”