Although the Korean employer released the Bangladeshi workers from their contracts, many of them had been stranded as they were unable to afford to buy plane tickets home, said some co-workers who returned home recently.The Bangladeshis were all working on construction projects in the Bismayah region, south of Baghdad, when Sunni militants began seizing large parts of the country from the Iraqi army last month.Raqibul Islam, a member of the 21 group of workers who managed to return home on Tuesday, said “We bought the plane tickets at our own expense.”Another member of the group Mofidul Islam said abuses have been widespread in Iraq.Meanwhile, a senior government official said the authorities in Dhaka had offered to help bring the workers home, but most them were not interested as they had borrowed heavily to land a job in Iraq.According to official sources, around 20,000Bangladeshis are living in Iraq, although the actual number is thought to be much higher.AFP, Dhaka adds: Hundreds of Bangladeshi construction workers have been beaten and humiliated by soldiers in Iraq after becoming dragged into their host country’s sectarian conflict, two of their colleagues said Thursday.Some had their beards shaved off by the mainly Shiite Muslim troops after being accused of sympathising with Sunni insurgents while one of them was stripped naked, according to the men after they returned home.”They abducted the Bangladeshi cleric from our camp mosque last Thursday and when he was released on Saturday, you could see torture marks all over his body,” Raqibul Islam told AFP in an interview in Dhaka.”They burnt his beard with cigarettes and then cut it off with knife. His body was also beaten with stones. “He was tortured because he is a Sunni. He was returned only after we stopped work and protested his abduction,” he added.Mofidul Islam, another of the group of 21 workers, said “The Iraqis beat hundreds of our colleagues. They think that a beard is a sign that you are a Sunni militant so whoever has a big beard was targeted and beaten mercilessly.””One of the workers was made to strip naked and then beaten. They entered our camps and locked the doors and then beat the workers with rifles,” he added.
