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Published : 10 Nov 2025, 10:54 PM
People who pay middlemen large sums to travel illegally to Europe by sea are not only “victims” but also “responsible” for their fate, Italian Ambassador to Bangladesh Antonio Alessandro has said.
Speaking at a discussion in Dhaka on Monday, he remarked: “I noticed that in the media, you use the word victims for these people. I think that they become victims afterwards when they go through so many bad things, Libya, torture, that they travel by sea, some people die.”
“Certainly they become victim. But at the beginning, when they pay this insane amount of money to an illegal middleman, they are not victims, they are co-responsible for their own fate and destiny.”
“I think that we should also pass this message because you are not a victim, you risk to be co-responsible for what you are doing,” he said.
The envoy made these remarks while delivering the keynote speech at a discussion titled “Strengthening Relations: Exploring the Future between Bangladesh and Italy”, organised by the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS).
Citing media reports that some migrants spend up to 15,000 euro (around Tk 2.1 million) to reach Italy illegally, Alessandro advised investing that money in Bangladesh instead.
“I think with 15,000 euros, if you live in a village in Bangladesh, you can do a lot. You can open your shop, you can open your economic activity, you can invest in something -- you can do a lot of things, and be happy and prosperous in your own country.”
He also noted that documents issued by Bangladeshi authorities are sometimes found to be “fake”, urging greater responsibility in this regard.
“Foreign investors will not come until they are sure that there is a good system of public documents, whatever is issued by an authority Bangladesh is 100 percent true, and nobody has to care about checking,” he said.
