Legal migration versus human trafficking

The only problem that has challenged the very existence of manpower export of the country today is wanton application of Anti-Human Trafficking Act on recruiting agencies. The indiscriminate and unwarranted arrests of recruiting agents beyond the applicable jurisdiction of offences under Anti-Trafficking & Suppression Act, 2012 has created panic among recruiters that threatens to seriously affect manpower export from the country.

Legal migration is a domain of recruiting agencies and it is absolutely under the purview of Overseas Employment & Migrants Act, 2013 which is a comprehensive Act to govern legal migration. If that be so, then how and why the law enforcers are resorting to arrests of recruiting agents under Anti-trafficking and Suppression Act?

 It appears to be a matter of absolute convenience for the law enforcers. On a written complaint by anybody, proven or not proven, the law enforcers raid the office of the recruiting agent, haul up the agent and his staff, seize the computers, registers etc., and hands them over to concerned police station to file case under Anti-Trafficking Act. The convenience is that under this Act no arrest warrant is needed and the provisions are non-bailable, non-compoundable (meaning no compromise is allowed between complainant and alleged offender) and the time for filing charge sheet is 90 days. That means the alleged offender remains in custody for minimum 90 days.

But interestingly, none of the cases filed so far against recruiting agents, over the last few years, were charge-sheeted under Anti-Trafficking & Suppression Act, 2012. In Bangladesh's context, everybody understands the main reasons or attractions for such raids, especially as the raids are more frequent before festivals like Eids.

Nobody disputes that human trafficking is a heinous crime and offenders must be meted with the sternest punishment. But why is it being used against legal migration? We should scrutinise the issue more deeply.

The non-governmental organisations (NGOs), which are reputed to have patronisation of some big western powers, played a big role in drafting the Anti-Human Trafficking & Suppression Act, 2012. There were 13 NGOs at the Steering Committee and Implementation Committee of the law and surprisingly, the direct stakeholders like the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) and the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) were not invited to join the effort until 90 per cent of the drafting was done. Even the law was drafted by an expert hired by the NGOs. By sheer majority, the NGOs representing their mentor countries piloted the Law to their choice inserting clauses that tacitly indicates that human trafficking takes place behind the umbrella of legal migration. That is exactly what they targeted, not the real human traffickers. This indicates the design to eliminate legal migration from Bangladesh.

Job migration, under no circumstance, is human trafficking. The United Nation's Palermo protocol defines that human trafficking takes place when someone is transported forcefully, or abducted by deception and fraud and most importantly clandestinely. Does any of our recruiting agencies send any migrant overseas forcefully, or is anybody abducted by the recruiter to send to another country, or is anybody being sent deceptively or fraudulently or clandestinely? Certainly not. In legal migration, many government bodies are involved. Firstly, the host government which issues visa after assessing the need of the employer, then our embassy attests  visa documents after scrutiny, then by BMET who gives them thorough briefing before issuing Emigration Clearance for dispatch, and lastly, by the immigration police in airports. I am not mentioning the briefing done by the recruiting agencies, who are rated as evil doers by NGOs and law enforcers!

The same UN protocol differentiates human trafficking from People Smuggling. In the latter, people voluntarily request the smuggler's services for a fee, and there is no deception involved in this 'illegal' agreement. On arrival at the destination, the smuggled person is free to find his own way.

All the cross-border mobility in many countries, including the Indian sub-continent, happens in this way. A glaring example is Felani who died being shot by BSF while scaling the barbed wire at border. All the people from Africa and Asia, including Bangladesh, who try to cross the Mediterranean to Europe are examples of People Smuggling, not trafficking. Because, they go of their own will and pay for the services of smugglers. The same applies to the horrendous stories of death of many Bangladeshis in Thai jungles trying to cross over to Malaysia. All these come under the purview of People Smuggling, not Trafficking, as defined by the United Nations. Till date, not a single of our recruiting agencies has been found involved in People Smuggling.

Real cases of human trafficking have been poignantly narrated in Alex Haley's book Roots in Harriet Beecher Stowe's book Uncle Tom's Cabin. The western countries which for centuries abducted and smuggled innumerable people from the shores of Africa and conducted the inhuman trade on slavery for slavery, now take the stance of the 'holiest of the holies' and brand other countries in their 'Trafficking in Persons Index' with the help of their cohort NGOs who act as their ear, eyes and tongue in data collection. 

No country under the sun except Bangladesh, whose economy thrives on remittance from the migrants, equates legal migration with Human Trafficking. How can anybody forget the contribution of remittance from the migrants in promoting Bangladesh to the rank of a lower middle-income country?  

But, the NGOs organised innumerable advocacy seminars during and after framing of the Law to press home that 'Human Trafficking can take place through migration'.  That is the catchy phrase and nobody bothers to delve deep to find out what really UN defines as human trafficking! 

If the government policymakers believe that the law enforcers are doing an excellent job in hounding down the valid recruiting agents ignoring the disclaimer at Clause 4(5) of Anti-Human Trafficking & Suppression Act, 2012, and if raids in the offices of valid agents and hauling up the owners with all their staff continue, then the government should immediately stop legal migration by a Statutory Regulatory Order (SRO).

And if the decision is to keep the legal migration sector vibrant, then the law enforcers must be stopped from harassing valid recruiting agents and all complaints of breach of contract by employers or misconduct of recruiting agents must be referred to the Complaint Cell of BMET  to address the matter under Overseas Employment & Migrants Act, 2013.

It is up to the policymakers to decide whether to keep manpower export, the lifeline of our economy, kicking or to choke it to death.

The writer is a recruiting agent.  

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