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15 trafficking victims return home from Indonesia

FE Report | February 17, 2019 00:00:00


Fifteen Bangladeshi nationals who were trafficked to Indonesia returned home on Saturday.

With the fresh arrival, so far 150 Bangladeshis have come from the Southeast Asian country.

A total of 295 people from Bangladesh, among them 20 to 25 Rohingya refugees, were taken to the country by human traffickers with the promise of sending them to Malaysia for job, said a returnee Bangladeshi.

The trafficking incident came to light when some local people indentified them and took their pictures to different media, said one of the victims who returned home on Saturday.

However, international media last week reported that Indonesian police found 193 Bangladeshis locked up in a shop house after human traffickers had taken them there with the promise of sending them to Malaysia.

Quoting North Sumatra's immigration chief on Thursday last, Reuters reported that the men entered Indonesia as tourists via Bali and the city of Yogyakarta with the intention of going to Malaysia for work.

"They are victims of human trafficking and were lured here," Fery Monang Sihite said by telephone, adding that the men had been locked up in Medan on the island of Sumatra.

The men, who were described as in a healthy condition when they were found on Tuesday night, had been taken to an immigration detention centre and would be sent back to Bangladesh, Sihite said.

When contacted, 19 years old Jamal Hossain (not real name) said he was captive in a shop house for 32 days while many of them were there for more than two months.

They suffered subhuman treatment there receiving food only once a day.

Some of them fell sick due to starvation and want of accommodation, he said.

When anyone became very much sick then traffickers took them to a hospital and then people followed them and identified the house where they were kept confined, he added.

Traffickers took Tk300,000 from Mr Hossain promising to send him to Malaysia with company visa for one year.

Now the victims are at the immigration camp in Indonesia, according to him.

Talking to the FE, Shariful Islam, head of BRAC migration programme, said there might be a close collusion between the traffickers' network and a section of officials at the Bangladesh and Indonesian airports.

"So it is needed to properly investigate the matter," he said, adding BRAC has given necessary support to the victims to go back to their homes.

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