Bangladeshis are at the top of the people from various nationalities who have crossed the Mediterranean Sea or land borders to reach European countries without valid documents so far in 2021.
The United Nations refugee agency in their latest data showed that 3,332 or 14.5 per cent of the 16,820 cases of undocumented migrants analysed in the first six months of the year were Bangladeshis.
Bangladeshi migrant rights workers said that they were worried about the figure and were looking for the answer as to what led to the high number of human-trafficking or migrant-smuggling cases reported from Bangladesh with other war-ravaged or politically unstable countries.
‘We do not have any war going on in our country,’ Shariful Hasan, head of migration programme at the non-government organisation BRAC, one of safe migration campaigners, said on the eve of World Day Against Trafficking in Persons to be observed today.
He told New Age that large numbers of Bangladeshis, chiefly youths, were taking the risky journey spending as much as Tk 16 lakh after they saw that their relatives or acquaintances from their locality had settled in European countries and had been enjoying a better life and livelihood over the years.
‘Many of them are going there to upgrade their social status,’ he added.
A BRAC migration study suggested that Bangladeshis used at least 18 routes for their risky and undocumented migration or human trafficking, mostly using visit visa.
Shariful said that the Covid pandemic would exacerbate the situation in coming days, pointing out that the number of rescued, missing or dead Bangladeshis was increasing.
One of the Bangladeshis who reached Italy several years ago after a three-month journey through land borders told New Age that he was not willing to remember his ordeal anymore but was still trying for legal documentation.
Alfai All Hoosain Shojib, 22, who had gone to central and southeast European country Croatia on February 22, 2021 and came back home on May 12 this year after being tortured, told New Age that he went to Europe for a better job but was subjected to torture and cheated.
The trafficking victim said that the traffickers wanted to send him to Italy but he returned home instead. He said that the job crisis in the country led him to travel to Croatia.
‘Two of my sisters were unemployed after their post-graduation. And you know how difficult to get a job in the country. I thought I could make changes. But I was deceived,’ said Shojib.
Jahangirnagor University economics professor Anu Muhammad said that there was little similarity between the reality and what was told publicly about development and employment generation in the country.
He said that a large number of young people were uncertain about their employment prospects in the country, adding that that’s why they are going abroad and they are ‘desperate’.
GSM Jafarullah, additional secretary (political and ICT) at the home ministry’s Public Security Division, said that the tourist visas needed to be monitored to control human trafficking while the government was taking some pragmatic decisions to this end.
Saidur Rahman Khan, a special superintendent of police at the Serious Crime And Homicide Division of the Criminal Investigation Department, said that they tried to identify those who misused the terms of their visas.
After Bangladesh, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees named Tunisia, Syria, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Eritrea, Sudan, Guinea and Afghanistan as the other major nationalities from which people took the risky journey to European countries.
In the first three months of 2021, some 4,600 refugees and migrants crossed the sea from Libya to Europe, a 53 per cent increase compared to the same period in 2020.
According to available information, so far in 2021, Bangladeshis, Sudanese and Guineans have been the primary nationality groups to reach Italy.
Again, the highest 794 Bangladeshis were among the nationalities from which people arrived in Italy and Malta after departing from Libya between January and March in 2021, the data showed.
According to the UN agency, the total number of undocumented refugees or migrants from multiple countries recorded as of July 26 was 47,425.
Of them, 44,093 people reached Italy, Greece, Spain, Cyprus and Malta by sea while 3,332 others reached Greece and Spain by land by July 25.
Of the 5,800 refugees and migrants that reached Italy in June, 52 per cent had departed from Libya and 22 per cent from Tunisia.
According to statistics, most people departing from Libya so far this year have been from Bangladesh, Eritrea and Egypt.
Apart from these numbers, the UN agencies estimated that 937 others had died or gone missing as of July 25 in their journey to Europe.
The number of deaths of Bangladeshis in the process could not be confirmed.
On June 10, 439 migrants, including 164 Bangladeshis, were rescued and detained by the Libyan coast guard from the Mediterranean Sea while they were on their way to Europe.
On May 18, the Tunisian navy rescued 68 Bangladeshis after a boat carrying them capsized in the sea.
Thirteen Bangladeshis were reported missing. They were on their way to Italian shores from Libya when the boat capsized.
Bangladesh foreign ministry officials asked more than 160 Bangladeshis rescued earlier this year from the Mediterranean Sea whether they wanted to return home but none was willing to do so.
‘In the initial interview by Bangladesh embassy officials with some of the Bangladeshi victims rescued from the Mediterranean coasts, it appeared that they were allured or enticed by the traffickers with the false hope of highly-paid jobs in Europe,’ foreign secretary Masud Bin Momen said on Wednesday in a programme.
Law enforcers have launched crackdown against human traffickers or their associates in Bangladesh on multiple times.
On July 11, Rapid Action Battalion members claim to have arrested seven members of a gang that smuggled people from Madaripur, Gopalganj and Dhaka to Europe by the Mediterranean Sea.
In the Trafficking in Persons report, the United States on July 1 stated that Bangladesh did not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but was making significant efforts to do so. ‘Therefore Bangladesh remained on Tier 2.’
