37 more Bangladeshis may be repatriated tomorrow

Thirty seven more Bangladeshi trafficking victims, who were rescued from the Bay of Bengal by the Myanmar navy on May 21, will be repatriated Wednesday or Thursday.

Myanmar Border Guard Police (BGP) will hand over 37 Bangladeshis to Border Guard of Bangladesh at Tumbru border point in Bandarban, Col Anisur Rahman, sector commander of Cox's Bazar BGB.

“We are waiting for their (BGP) letter in this regard,” Anisur said.

On May 21, Myanmar navy rescued 208 boatpeople when they were being trafficked into Malaysia. Initially, Myanmar authorities maintained that all the victims were Bangladeshis.

The Southeast Asian country sent back 150 of them on June 8.

The repatriation is taking place amid a regional crisis of human trafficking through the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea. The crisis unfolded in the first week of last month when Thailand found mass graves of “trafficking victims” in its southern Songkhla province.

Later, Thai authorities began a crackdown on those involved in the transnational crime.

Towards the end of that month, Malaysia also discovered over a hundred graves in Padang Besar, which has a border with southern Thailand.

Since the crackdown, several thousand boatpeople -- believed to be Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar and Bangladeshis -- have been rescued off the coasts of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Myanmar.