Rohingya girls rescued in Bangladesh
DHAKA 12 May (ANA) - At least 23 teenage Rohingya girls have been rescued after being brought from refugee camps to the capital, Dhaka, to be sent to Malaysia by air, Bangladesh police said on Sunday.
Dhaka police also arrested four human traffickers including a Rohingya couple and recovered more than 50 Bangladeshi passports from them on Saturday.
Police spokesman Mokhlesur Rahman said they raided a residence in the northern part of the city and found the teenagers hiding in a room behind a tailoring shop.
"They were promised jobs in Malaysia and brought from refugee camps in Cox's Bazar," he told AFP news agency, referring to the Rohingya settlements in Bangladesh's southeastern coastal district.
The girls - aged between 15 and 19 - could have been potential victims of forced prostitution, the official said.
"We have filed cases against the four arrested persons and sent the girls back to their camps in Cox's Bazar," Rahman said.
Abul Khair, local police chief of Ukhiya, where Kutupalong, the world's largest refugee camp is situated, said he received the girls and would send them to their homes in the camps.
Some 740,000 Rohingya fled a brutal military clampdown in Myanmar in August 2017 and arrived in Bangladesh to join another 300,000 already living in the refugee camps.
Desperate for a better life and an economic future, the refugees and in particular teenage girls easily fall prey to human traffickers roaming in the overcrowded camps.
According to Rohingya activists and rights groups, dozens of women are now regularly arriving in Malaysia to marry Rohingya men, reviving a form of transnational human trafficking that once moved thousands of Rohingya a year.(ANA)
FA/ANA/12 May 2019-----