Rohingya survivors of fatal capsize say ‘captain raped girls, purposely sank boat’

The boat glided across waters that were dark and still, under a night sky that was cloudless and calm. But on board, the 12-year-old girl quaked with fear.

The captain and crew who she says had tortured her and three other women and girls were not finished. And the punishment for disobedience, the men warned, would be death.

It was the third night that the girl and around 140 other ethnic Rohingya refugees had been trapped on the wooden fishing boat, floating off the coast of Indonesia.

These children, women and men had fled Bangladesh and their homeland, Myanmar, in a bid to escape violence and terror, only to face the same horrors with a crew that seemed to delight in their dread.

Huddled among the other women and girls, the 12-year-old — identified in this story only by the initial N, because she is a sexual assault survivor — tried to hide her face.

She had already survived a night in the captain’s bedroom, where she says he and several crew members had beaten and sexually abused her.

Like most of the passengers, she had survived attacks by Myanmar’s military that forced her and her family to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh.

There, she had survived nearly seven years in violence-plagued refugee camps. And she had thus far survived this journey without her family, who hoped she’d make it to Malaysia, where she was promised as a child bride to a man she had never met.

Her young life had been one long battle to survive. And so, it seemed, this night would be no different.

The captain was in a rage. He ordered more girls to join him and his crew in the bedroom.

No one budged.

“If you don’t come to us,” the captain shouted, “then we will capsize this boat!”

What happens next would force N and the other Rohingyas on board into yet another battle for survival.

For many, this would be the battle they finally lost.