Thailand has claimed that around 400 suspected Bangladeshis are now in different detention centres there.
“The Thai authorities have notified Bangladesh Embassy that about 400 suspected Bangladeshis are now in their detention centres,” Foreign Ministry Secretary (Bilateral) Mustafa Kamal told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
The Bangladesh Embassy immediately asked for consular access and interviewed many of them. “So far the embassy sent us identification documents of 214 and we are verifying it,” he said.
Another Foreign Ministry official who attended an inter-ministerial meeting yesterday told the Dhaka Tribune: “Police have so far identified 68 of the 214 as Bangladeshis and hopefully the whole process will complete by next week.”
About 200 of them had been arrested at different times since November and are now in different immigration detention centres in Songkhla province.
The victims told the embassy officials that they had been cheated by agents in both Bangladesh and Thailand and that the Thai agents had even beaten them to extract money, Mustafa Kamal said.
The Foreign Ministry had sent the documents to the Home Ministry for verification and after its clearance, the embassy would ask for the Thai authorities’ permission to take charge of the identified Bangladeshis, Kamal said.
“We will bring back everyone verified and confirmed as Bangladeshis through proper authorities,” he said.
“We do not want such an issue to become an irritant in our relationship with any country,” he added.
Asked when the repatriation process could begin, he said it was difficult to say. “Different ministries and agencies are involved in the process and we also need fund for the repatriation,” he said.
According to the Rules of Business, repatriation was a subject of the Foreign Ministry and it had already sought fund from the Finance Ministry for the repatriation, Kamal said, adding that the repatriation process could be expedited if the ministry had the fund.
Meanwhile, family members of seven victims had already submitted plane tickets to the foreign ministry, requesting the authorities for smooth repatriation of their relatives, the ministry official told the Dhaka Tribune after the inter-ministerial meeting.
Requesting not to name, the official said it did not take more than Tk25,000 to bring back a person from Thailand.
About 80 people were repatriated from Iran, one from Israel and about 10 from Lebanon in the past three months.
