Staff Reporter :
Eighty-nine Bangladeshi nationals were rescued from a coastal forest of Thailand on 13 October. They were abducted in Bangladesh and transported for sale as slaves in that country, report agencies.
Thai officials said, the rescued Bangladeshi nationals were promised good jobs, lucrative salaries and other facilities before their journey.
A rescued man, Abdur Rahim, said that they were taken to a jungle and left there without any food. They had to eat leaves of trees for 10 days in order to survive.
The officials of the government of Thailand said, they have been fighting against the slavery for long. They will continue to stop slavery in this country.
The rescued Bangladeshi nationals might be that group of people who recently left Cox’s Bazaar by trafficker’s boat, sources in Dhaka said.
About 176 people, including three women, were sent by a fishing vessel from Cox’s Bazaar to a remote island camp in the southern coast of Thailand.
Foreign office sources in Dhaka said, mystery shrouds over the whereabouts of the people, and Bangladesh officials were travelling southern Thailand in search of the victims who were sold on the boat.
Earlier, the Thai administration arrested two of its nationals on charge of cooperating with human traffickers. As many as 130 nationals were rescued from Takua Pa district of Thailand’s Phang Nga province. Of the victims, 16 were Rohingyas, a Muslim minority group from western Myanmar. Bangladeshi officials are now interviewing those people to ascertain whether they are
Bangladeshi nationals or Rohingyas, said an official.
He added, the Thai authorities are searching for several others who were reportedly on the board. Victims have told local journalists that they were beaten, abused and given little food by the traffickers.
The trafficking routes pass through the country’s southern part where thousands of Rohingyas were sent and tortured by traffickers. They were forced to live in the jungle camps in the most unhygienic condition last year, Human Rights groups say.
Tens of thousands of Rohingyas fled Myanmar since 2012 when Rakhine Buddhists killed hundreds of Myanmar Muslims and rendered 1,40,000 homeless.
But most of those on board were not travelling willfully to seek a new life in Malaysia or another country but victims of kidnappers.
From October and onwards, thousands of Rohingyas risk their lives to sail to Myanmar by boats. Many of them could reach Malaysia where there is a large Rohingya community.
