Arakan News Agency
Torture, rape, corruption, and ransom demands – the horror experienced by migrants has been allowed to flourish for decades, according to a source inside the Southeast Asian trafficking industry.…
Each year thousands of Rohingya refugees flee from Myanmar to camps at Cox’s Bazar across the border in Bangladesh. Seeking to continue their journey to countries such as Malaysia, they are vulnerable to the gangs who organise boat travel.
“We have to pay the local police [in Bangladesh] before making any voyage,” said Munirol, a broker for traffickers, who asked that his real name not be published to protect himself from police reprisals.
The 59-year-old said he fled persecution in Myanmar’s Rakhine state in the early 1990s and travelled to Cox’s Bazar. He later made the dangerous sea voyage to Malaysia, where he worked for eight years in construction before returning to Bangladesh, having become unhappy with the “tiresome and dangerous” work and being “regularly tortured” by supervisors and management.
While his only son stayed in Malaysia, where he drives a taxi, Munirol became a middle-man for migrant traders in Cox’s Bazar.
“This is easy money. We usually make 170,000 taka [$2,185] for every person that we can traffic to Malaysia,” he said, adding he personally gets $257 from each person sent.
Munirol said the traffickers bribe local authorities, including ruling party leaders.
“We will be forced to stop our operations if we do not pay them,” he said. “Everybody living in the coastal areas of Cox’s Bazar knows that the police help us. If we don’t pay them they will arrest us. We also have to pay the border guard officials.”
Al Jazeera contacted Bangladesh’s State Minister for Home Affairs Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal and Dhaka police chief AKM Shahidul Haque about the accusations, but received no response.
However, Colonel Mohammad Khalequzzaman, Border Guard Bangladesh’s sector commander for Cox’s Bazar, said he was unaware of such corrupt practices by authorities.
“This is the first time I am hearing this,” Khalequzzaman told Al Jazeera. “Our accountability is 100 percent. If we get proof of any such incidents where officials are taking money from traffickers, we will take prompt actions against them.”
Source : Al Jazeera
