Sabuj Mollah Sabuj Mollah thought he was almost there and could even smell the air of Malaysia. The 28-year-old along with 90 others from Bangladesh could start visualising a rosy future of their families once they got jobs there. But their trawler never touched Malaysian waters as traffickers in disguise of job contractors kept them all in a jungle near the southern Thailand border on a December
afternoon. "Instead of sending us to Malaysia, they handed us over to some traffickers," Sabuj told The Daily Star recently. The people on the trawler were aware of the risk of being caught by law enforcers anytime during their long and illegal sea journey but they were desperate for a job in Malaysia. "But the thought of being trafficked never popped up in our minds," he said. After losing his father a decade ago when he was still a teenager, the man from Saltha upazila in Faridpur had been facing trouble in earning two square meals for his family driving a three-wheeler -- Nasimons. When he decided to search for a job to "turn their fortune", his dream resonated with six others from his district. So, when a local manpower broker approached them with the prospect of good jobs in Malaysia, they didn't waste time to accept, knowing they were taking the illegal way. Advertisement Each of them paid the broker Tk 2.5 lakh and travelled to Dhaka and then to Teknaf in Cox's Bazar. There, the number of the fortune seekers rose to 90. With six to seven brokers, the trawler left Teknaf on a December night. While they were given loaves of dehydrated bread, banana and a small amount of drinking water during their five-day journey, the ration reduced to dried bread, puffed rice and even smaller quantity of water twice a day during their captivity in the jungle, Sabuj recalled. Separating the victims, the traffickers took away their mobile phones making them unable to communicate with anyone. "The fear of death was constant. We could not sleep or feel the hunger. Also worrying about the future of my family, I could not help crying sometimes. The captors would beat me up if I cried," Shah Poran, another victim from Narsingdi, told The Daily Star. With their dreams shattered, the victims only prayed for rescue. Twenty-six days into their captivity, Thai police rescued around 400 abductees, almost all Bangladeshis, from the jungle and sent them to detention centres. Another 300 were rescued until the middle of this month. On information from the Thai foreign ministry, Bangladesh embassy in Bangkok freed and sent back home around 300 Bangladeshis including Sabuj and Poran till date. NETWORK OF BROKERS Most of the jobseekers who took the illegal sea journey to Malaysia but were caught later over the last few months are from Faridpur, Narsingdi, Satkhira, Jessore, Sirajganj and Narayanganj, according to Bangladesh embassy officials. "But they come from all districts," said Ehteshamul Haque of the Bangladesh embassy who had talked to the victims at detention centres after their rescue. The brokers, however, are mainly based in Cox's Bazar and Chittagong, and many of them have their own trawlers. According to law enforcers in Cox's Bazar, around 8,000 to 10,000 Bangladeshis use the sea route to reach Malaysia illegally every year.
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