The Bangladesh Navy on Monday rescued around 600 nationals of Bangladesh and Myanmar from a cargo vessel near the St. Martin’s Island of the Bay of Bengal while they were being trafficked to Malaysia. News reports said they were enticed by traffickers of lucrative jobs. Experts believe that fewer incidents of human trafficking come into light after successful rescue operations. This unscrupulous business goes successfully as usual in other cases. Desperate to make fortunes by putting their lives at risk, these Bangladeshis go for such venture in the face of problematic internal social dynamics, lack of opportunity for jobs to youth resulting in unemployment related sufferings of life.
The organised traffickers have been doing such business for many years. Even after rescuing 130 Bangladeshi slaves from a Thai jungle, the government could not take any attempt to arrest the kingpins of trafficking. The inaction of the government to secure life of the nationals proved its inability to tackle this situation.
A rescued youth said, “One early morning, about a week ago, they took us near the sea and got us on a small boat. Later, we were shifted to a small fishing trawler where 20-25 people were already aboard. As the trawler was very small, we had to sit all the time and couldn’t lie down.”
He alleged that the traffickers beat them up with iron rods if they tried to complain about anything. They had been on the trawler for five to six days and were given only some rice and two chilies twice a day to eat.
How the traffickers lure people, mainly helpless and poor, has already been documented by several rescued persons but the inaction of police and other law enforcers which are allowing the human traffickers to put the life of hundreds at risk stun us. One rescued youth Ismail along with two of his friends was going to visit his elder sister in Teknaf seven days ago. On the way, the three was kidnapped by a group of smugglers some 15 kilometres off Teknaf. They were kept confined to a hole in a hill at night. The next morning, they were taken to the sea by a small boat. The kidnappers took away their cell-phone sets and all belongings.
It is easy to condemn human trafficking but the government must not forget its responsibility to create jobs for unemployed ones. The government seems quite happy with the human trade bluntly called slave trade for the foreign exchange migrant workers earn. It is inhuman to be victims of human trafficking. Those who find jobs in foreign countries the work like bonded labour subjecting themselves to inhuman treatment cannot be something to be proud of a nation. So talk about creating jobs for the victims of human trafficking.
