Rohingya survivors of deadly capsizing say ‘Captain raped girl, intentionally sank boat’

The boat glided over dark and still waters under a cloudless and calm night sky. But on board, the 12-year-old girl was shaking in fear.

The captain and crew she says tortured her and three other women and girls weren’t done yet. And the punishment for disobedience, the men warned, would be death.

It was the third night the girl and about 140 other ethnic Rohingya refugees were trapped on the wooden fishing boat floating off the coast of Indonesia.

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

Huddled among the other women and girls, the 12-year-old – identified in this story only by the initial “N” because she was the victim of a sexual assault – tried to hide her face.

She had already survived a night in the captain’s bedroom, during which she said he and several crew members beat and sexually abused her.

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

There she survived for almost seven years in violent refugee camps. And she had survived this journey so far without her family, who hoped she would make it to Malaysia, where as a child she was promised a bride to a man she had never met.

Her young life had been one long struggle for survival. And so it seemed that this night would be no different.

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

Nobody moved.

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

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

For many, this would be the battle they would have lost forever.