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At sea the next morning, the teenager used a satellite phone to call her mother, Gule Jaan, 43, to say she was heading for Malaysia on a small wooden boat, packed with 87 Rohingya refugees, including 65 women and girls.
Some were fleeing what their families say is the increased risk of sexual assault and rape during the pandemic in the sprawling refugee camps of Cox’s Bazar, in Bangladesh, home to more than 1 million displaced people.
The 16-year-old asked her mother to pay 40,000 taka ($470) to the trafficker for her passage to Malaysia, where she hoped to have a better life. Her mother was still arranging the payment when families of other passengers on board received a call to say the boat’s engine had failed.
They had been at sea for just five days. Now, more than two months later, the boat is missing.
“Please, can someone let me know if my daughter is alive or dead?” said Jaan. “She is a good girl and was lured by the trafficker to go on the boat.”
The passengers’ families and…
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