Believe it or not, many Bangladeshi migrant workers are being forced into “slavery” in Iran and work at factories there without wages.
According to the Criminal Investigation Department dealing with a number of such incidents, several thousand Bangladeshi migrant workers have been compelled to get into a sort of modern slavery in Iran and work there without pay.
“We hope to bring back 27 Bangladeshi victims home from Iran in mid-April and the number of such victims might be higher,” CID Additional DIG Md Shah Alam told the Dhaka Tribune at his office on Tuesday.
“We are planning to send a delegation to Iran who will help rescue our people,” he said.
Pervez Rana, a victim from Jatrabari in the capital, said he had worked as a housekeeper in Dubai since 2012 and got Tk24,000 as monthly wage.
“One day a colleague named Sumon from Noakhali told me that a man familiar to him would send us to Europe and we would get higher salary,” said Rana.
He gave Sumon’s acquaintance Tk30,000 and was contracted to pay another Tk40,000 after reaching Turkey. “I was given assurance that I would be able to go to Greece from Turkey,” he told the Dhaka Tribune.
In Dubai, Rana and five others were handed over to some Pakistani people who threatened them, brandishing pistols and knives, and took them to Oman by road. “After two weeks, three Afghans armed with pistols and knives forced us to leave the place in a speedboat. As one of us fell sick and started vomiting, an Afghan stabbed him in the stomach and threw him into the Arab Sea,” said Rana.
He said later they had been taken to a jungle in Iran where he saw around 200 more Bangladeshis. “The Afghans and Pakistanis handed us over to a person named Kashem, who also goes by the name of Quader Molla, from Sylhet.”
They had been confined in a room and their money and mobile phones had been taken away, he said, adding that they had been asked to pay Tk500,000 for their release.
“As my relatives could not pay the money, they beat me for months. I could not even contact my relatives for six months,” said Rana.
He said Russell, one of his friends from Comilla, had been brought to Tehran from Port Abbas and sold to a company for Tk250,000. Russell worked there without any wage for a few months. Afterwards, he fled the company and joined another.
In January Russell had phoned Rana from Tehran and said he was trying to return home.
According to a letter of the Bangladesh Embassy in Tehran, a number of Bangladeshi migrants had been forced to work at a factory owned by an Iranian without wage.
“It is a serious crime. If the affected people file complaints, we will take it into account,” Expatriates’ Welfare Minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain told the Dhaka Tribune. “We are committed to bringing the perpetrators to book.”
Sakiul Millat Morshed, executive director of SHISUK working with migrant workers who fall victims to human trafficking, said the labour market would be affected seriously due to such incidents.