Bangladeshis victims of human trafficking, not smuggling: Foreign Secretary Shahidul Haque

Bangladesh nationals found on high seas are the victims of human trafficking, not smuggling, says foreign secretary Md Shahidul Haque, insisting they have different connotations.

Staff Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 2 June 2015, 09:25 AM
Updated : 2 June 2015, 12:21 PM

The person being smuggled is generally cooperating, while trafficking must contain an element of force, fraud or coercion, among many other things, said Haque, while briefing journalists on Tuesday.

He was providing details about the Friday Bangkok meeting on the Asian migration crisis where he represented Bangladesh.

The meeting came in the wake of recent perilous exodus of people fleeing south by boat to Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Haque said initial verification suggested less than 30 percent staying in the international camps in Malaysian, Indonesia and Thailand were victims from Bangladesh.

The total number may be around 1,500, he said.

“We’ll try to bring them within a month once we complete the final verification”.

The home ministry is working on the final verification based on the primary information Bangladesh missions in those countries gathered from those camps.

Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia have set up camps to shelter hundreds of refugees arriving on its shores by boat from the south.

There has been a surge of migrants arriving mostly from Myanmar and heading for Malaysia and Indonesia following a crackdown on trafficking by Thailand, usually the first destination in the region's people-smuggling network.

The foreign secretary said he stressed on finding the “root causes” of such trafficking and highlighted the human rights aspects of the victims in the Bangkok meeting.

“We are ready to collaborate with international community,” he said, “Our government is zero-tolerant against the traffickers”.

He said even the Myanmar delegation approached them after the meeting and said “we have to address this together”.

Foreign Secretary Md Shahidul Haque

“I said we are always open, and ready to work and cooperate”.

The foreign secretary, however, warned against politicising the issue. “If we do that (politicise), it’ll be a disservice to the victims,” he said.

“We have to take steps, bilaterally, regionally and globally to combat this multibillion dollar racket,” he said.

He said an MoU would also be signed with India during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s June 6-7 visit on working together to combat human trafficking.

He said the whole issue was “very complex” as “one cannot directly relate it to poverty, there are many other factors”.

In the Bangkok meeting, he also drew attention to Bangladesh’s socio-economic progress, saying the country had made impressive gains in human development creating international headlines despite resource constraints.

“In this context, there must be other factors or forces at play beyond our immediate control that make our people vulnerable to enticements to risk their lives at sea.

“In search of these factors, we may have to look for external factors and forces,” he said in a veiled reference to the persecution of Rohingya Muslims in their homeland Myanmar.

Myanmar authorities deny the Rohingyas are Burmese nationals, and its representative at the Friday meeting warned against pointing a finger at them.

Myanmar has tended to bracket the Rohingyas who have lived in the Arakan coast for centuries as 'illegal Bengalis'.