Bangladeshi expatriates do not get proper legal support from its mission offices abroad in the absence of required lawyers and interpreters, experts and family members of victims have said.
They say the victims have to serve longer jail terms despite their offences not being very serious, as there is no proper legal support from the embassies of Bangladesh abroad.
In the absence of any interpreter the expatriates often remain in the dark when any case is filed against any of them. For this reason sometimes they unknowingly sign the papers containing charges of serious offences.
According to available information from the Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment Ministry (EWOEM), until May 2014, about 3,870 Bangladeshis were under trial and 1,362 were serving jail terms in different countries following various offences.
Of them 1,744 Bangladeshis were under trial in Malaysia while 567 were convicted and 935 under trial in the UAE.
Similarly, the number of convicts and those under trial were 138 and 292 in Saudi Arabia, 228 and 230 in Kuwait, 78 and 126 in Singapore, 47 and 55 in Qatar, 14 and 45 in the Maldives, 07 and 19 in Brunei, 04 and 01 in South Korea, 02 and 03 in Libya, 10 and 40 in Jordan respectively.
About 168 and 99 Bangladeshis were convicted in Oman and Bahrain respectively. On the other hand, 185, 175, and 20 people were under trial in Greece, Lebanon and Turkey.
Besides, a total of 65 Bangladeshis were arrested in murder cases in the UAE. Of them, 14 were awarded death sentences, 34 convicted and 31 under trial.
The workers were arrested in different cases like having no work permit, expiry of work permit, illegal use of work permit, theft, smuggling, abduction etc.
Jakir Hossain (35), hailing from Chandpur, was arrested in Bahrain in June, 2014 following expiry of his work permit.
Hawa Begum, sister of Jakir, said he was given three years' imprisonment for the misdeed.
She said no official from the Bangladesh embassy there went to the jail to meet her brother for his release or reduction of the punishment.
He went to the Middle East country in 2008 with a job as a construction worker. But he fled to another area for a better job and became undocumented, said Ms Hawa.
A Yemeni helped police to arrest him as there was a conflict between Jakir and the Yemen national, she mentioned.
She said they had appealed to the district manpower office to get her brother released.
But at home also they did not get proper cooperation from the officials. "I was forced to give Tk 500 as bribe to file an application to the office".
Founding chair of Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU) Tasnim Siddiqui said officials from the mission offices usually visit the detention camps and provide services to the arrested workers there.
But the people who are sentenced do not get help in the absence of a proper system.
There is no lawyer who would work for the detainees to help them get free. "That is why people suffer imprisonment for longer terms without having committed any serious offences."
She also said there are no interpreters at Bangladesh embassies to translate the foreign languages while filing of any such cases.
"So the people many times get serious penalties despite their offence being minor," the RMMRU chair said.
She called upon the authorities concerned to contact law firms of the countries concerned to engage legal advisers to work on behalf of the convicted expatriate workers.
She also gave example of neighbouring countries like India and Sri Lanka that do the same.
The RMMRU chair, however, said in most cases Bangladeshis are being arrested for irregular migration and a very small number of people are involved with serious crimes abroad.
So with proper support Bangladesh can get most of the expatriates released from foreign jails without difficulty.
Officials at the EWOEM have also acknowledged it. They have said although the missions give all kinds of assistance to the convicted expatriates, there is no suitable legal support to move on behalf of the accused Bangladeshi nationals.
They also blamed the unavailability of budget allocation to employ lawyers from the countries concerned for it.
EWOEM secretary Khandakar Iftekhar Haidar said Bangladeshi overseas workers were getting all kinds of assistance from the mission offices.
"While the workers are convicted of any crime, officials from the missions communicate with them," he said.
More than 9.0 million Bangladeshis are working abroad, the maximum number of them in Middle East countries.
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