Over 150 people reportedly died in the last two years while law enforcers and security officials detained more than 2,000 others who were heading towards Malaysia illegally on the Bay of Bengal.
In addition to the six people, who were shot dead by traffickers on June 11, at least 60 people died after a trawler capsized at the sea on November 7, 2012. In April this year, another 27 people died from starvation while making the illegal journey.
Commander AKA Maruf Hassan of the Coast Guard told the Dhaka Tribune unless awareness could be raised among people, such illegal journeys would continue to be made, causing sufferings as well as deaths.
“We often detained the traffickers but not the people who play key roles behind the scenes,” he said.
According to Coast Guard official sources, they detained a total of 1,129 people from 2013 to June 11 this year. Of them, 361 were arrested last year, 57 in January this year, 211 in February, 73 in March, 46 in April, 66 in May and 315 till June 11.
Besides, BGB and RAB arrested around 1,000 during the same period and Bangladesh Navy arrested over 50 others.
According to UNHCR, an estimated 13,000 people, including Bangladeshis and the Rohingyas, left for Malaysia through the Bay of Bengal on traffickers’ boats in 2012.
Some 485 people are reported to have drowned in four boat accidents on the Bay of Bengal that year, though the real death toll is believed to be much higher, a recent UN report observed.
The UN estimates that nearly 50 to 150 Bangladeshis travel to Malaysia every week by paying traffickers who operate on these illegal sea routes.
The Rohingyas first began making such precarious boat journeys to reach Southeast Asian countries, mainly Malaysia, in the 1990s. Recently Bangladeshi youths have begun joining them in such dangerous voyages.
Sources in the Coast Guard, BGB, Bangladesh Navy and RAB said traffickers prefer the Bay of Bengal for trafficking people to Malaysia. At least 25 syndicates, with several thousand agents, are engaged in this illegal act and they use false promises of work with better pay to entice people into making such journeys.
According to sources, masterminds of such syndicates operate in collusion with political leaders of Cox’s Bazar and usually reside in Bangladesh, Myanmar and Malaysia.
The sources said trafficking agents generally search for poor and unemployed people in Chittagong, Cox’s Bazar, Dhaka and several other northern districts who could be trapped by the dream of better life abroad. They usually demand Tk2-3 lakh from each of the people intending to go to Malaysia through the sea route.
With such glorious promises and a temptation too hard to resist, many poor people embarked on the journey but ended up losing their valuables. A large number of trafficking victims are even languishing in Malaysian jails on charges of illegal immigration.
According to BGB sources, traffickers usually carry their clients on motorboats and trawlers in the sea. Apart from frequent accidents, these water carriages are often caught by BGB or Nasaka of Myanmar or the Thai Navy.
