Stop human traffickers from misleading our youths

THE global refugee crisis enters its fourth year but the demography of migrants reaching the European shores from Libya using the Mediterranean route had witnessed unprecedented shift by now from predominantly Syrians to Bangladeshi nationals where Afghans, Iraqis, Eritreans’ and Sub-Saharan Africans were at the forefronts earlier. Bangladesh topped the news early this week as the World’s one of the biggest source of illegal capital flight which was around $ 9 billion alone in 2013 and the total amount lost was $ 75 billion in nine years since 2005. But new story has hit the headline this time that Bangladeshi nationals are also at the forefront of illegal migrants to Europe via Libya as human traffickers have warned up illegal trade. Invariably we must say when our leaders regularly tell about big development the ground reality is that we are both losing our hard earned capital in large amount and also our manpower, which could be used otherwise productively to create jobs and protect our youths. Our youths would not have fallen to human traffickers desperate from joblessness to lose everything and even their lives illegally crossing the Mediterranean in small boats.

News reports galore often that Bangladeshi nationals in Libya were being held in bondage and families in Bangladesh were paying the ransom to free the boy to move onward to Italy. Many reach the Italian coast while many others drown in the sea.

The New Nation reported on Sunday that the number of illegal migrants from Bangladesh to Europe has tremendously increased over the recent months. When the number was just one in three months in the first quarter of last year, it rose to 2,800 during the first three months of 2017 making the country the largest single origin of migrants currently arriving on European shores. They are reportedly paying more than $10,000 (£7,750) each to be taken from Dhaka to Dubai or Turkey onwards to Libya which provides the sailing point across the sea.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said the emerging route had dramatically changed the demographics of asylum-seekers arriving in Italy, who until now have largely hailed from Sub-Saharan Africa. “The thing that’s really changing is the main nationality of the migrants, and the number coming from Bangladesh,” IOM’s representative told the London based The Independent.

“Some migrants taken ashore in Sicily and Apulia said their trip to Libya was organized by an “agency” that provided them with a working visa for between $3,000 (£2,300) and $4,000 (£3,100). “From Bangladesh, they first travelled to Dubai and Turkey and finally reached Libya by plane,” an IOM spokesperson said. “At the airport, an ’employer’ met them and took their documents.”

We must say the traffickers are not unknown to immigration officials, law enforcers as well as to political leaders and yet why they are failing to stop them is the big question. The government must find out the ‘agency’ doing it and must immediately destroy the network.