Sixty-one Bangladeshis, who returned home Sunday after nearly four months in Sri Lankan detention camps described their experience of spending 24 days adrift at sea on a broken-down boat, without food or water.
“We were floating on the sea without food and drinking water, and had given up hope of ever returning home alive. Allah saved us,” Mohammad Younus told the Dhaka Tribune, as he waited in line to board a bus for home at the Shahjalal International Airport.
Lured by unscrupulous middlemen with promises of lucrative jobs, Younus and 61 other poverty-stricken Bangladeshis, including a woman, set out for Malaysia on a small trawler from Teknaf on January 9. They were accompanied by 76 Rohingyas from Myanmar. However, their journey turned disastrous when coast guards near the Thai border forced them out into the open sea.
After 24 days at sea, they drifted towards the Sri Lankan coast and were rescued by the navy on February 3. One of the Bangladeshis died at sea, and the rest were put in detention camps on the island nation.
“The local middlemen promised to send us to Malaysia on a ship but they put us on a small-engine boat,” Younus, who comes from Teknaf, said. “We had a contract for Tk120,000 per person but we only paid Tk20,000 each and the rest was supposed to be paid after getting jobs in Malaysia.”
“We were told that we would be taken to Thailand first, and we would go to Malaysia from there,” Younus said. “But the Thai coastguard forced us to float towards the deep sea and we were helpless without food and water. When we neared the coast of Sri Lanka, its navy rescued us and kept us in camps.”
Asked why he had risked his life to go to Malaysia by sea, Younus said: “Our culverts and dams are damaged and we have no work. So, how do we lead our lives?”
The distance from Bangladesh to Malaysia is more than 2,500km as the crow flies, while Sri Lanka is around 2,000km to the southwest.
Another victim, Ziaul Haque, said: “We risked our lives as we wanted to go to Malaysia for less money.”
The repatriated victims said officials from the Bangladesh mission in Sri Lanka visited them at the detention camps and helped them to return home.
“We were well taken care of in Sri Lanka,” Ershad, who comes from Moheskhali in Cox’s Bazar, said. “The Bangladesh high commission also gave us some money,” he added.
Most of the returning victims said the middlemen – identified as Iman Sharif, Abul Hasem and Liton – were all from Teknaf.
Meanwhile, Bmet Director (Immigration) Mizanur Rahman said immigration police at the airport arrested Sharif, who was among the 61 returnees.
Officials from the foreign ministry, the Bmet and the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society received the returnees as they arrived on a Mihin Lanka flight from Colombo. The body of the dead person would be flown back later.
An official of the International Committee of the Red Cross said the organisation helped the victims to correspond with their families. The local Red Crescent Society also arranged for buses to return them to their homes.