One broker an upazila's woe
Sona Mia has no more tears left to shed. He is now afraid of something ominous coming his son's way.
Mujibur Rahman has been missing since October 1, 2013 when he left home for Malaysia to make a fortune.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. "I can't tell you how painful it is for a father," said the 50-year-old rickshaw van puller at Kaindi village in Araihazar, Narayanganj.
Unaware of the danger they would be in, Mujibur, 25, and his brother-in-law Akhter Hossain, 28, took a voyage across the Bay of Bengal.
The two tea stall owners are among the village's 16 youths who fell prey to trafficker Yakub Ali of Kalagaiccha village in the same upazila. Yakub is a suspected member of a transnational human trafficking gang active in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand and Malaysia.
Read all stories of "Dark Triangle" series-
- Slave Trade Booms In Dark Triangle
- Kidnapped, treated like slaves of past
- 'MALAYSIA AIRPORTS' in Teknaf
- Sailing off into hell
- Illegally driven as legally restricted
- One broker an upazila's woe
- Kidnapped, turned into slaves of past
Like Kaindi, hundreds of youths have been missing from villages in Narayanganj, Narsingdi, Jessore, Satkhira, Sirajganj, Bogra, Kushtia, and Chuadanga.
Sona Mia had no idea whatsoever about his son's planned trip to Malaysia. A week after the two went missing, Yakub told him that the duo left for abroad and asked him to arrange money for their entry to Malaysia.
An investigation by this newspaper found that fortune seekers, mostly aged between 20 and 35, both from Bangladesh and Myanmar are tricked by the lure of highly-paid jobs in Malaysia, but ultimately become captives of traffickers in Thai jungles. They are forced to pay ransoms ranging from Tk 2 lakh to Tk 3.5 lakh through their families before they are pushed into Malaysia.
Sona Mia never knew how boat people are killed in the sea or jungles, tortured or traded for labour for failure in paying ransom. Even he might be totally unaware that 26 bodies were exhumed from a mass grave in a Thai jungle camp on May 2.
Yakub in November 2013 informed him that his son had reached Thailand. He demanded Tk 1.2 lakh for sending Mujibur to Malaysia.
"I agreed, but only if my son called me. But the call never came," said Sona Mia. Nobody saw Yakub in the village since then.
As weeks went by, parents of the missing youths complained to Yakub's father Shamsul Haque about their sons. Shamsul assured the parents of bringing back the youths, and demanded Tk 50,000 from each of the families for freeing the fortune-seekers from Thai jails.
Nine of the families paid Shamsul the amount. He took a month but returned the money after failing to deliver on the promise. The victims' parents then sought help from Ali Hossain, chairman of Haizdi Union Parishad.
"We told the chairman that all the victims' families were utterly devastated by the absence of their sons as they left their wives and children back home," said Sona Mia. But the chairman was unmoved.
On the advice of a victim's relative a few months later, Sona Mia along with some relatives of the missing youths visited Cox's Bazar and Chittagong jails, but didn't find any of the 16 victims there.
They returned downhearted and lodged a case with Araihazar Police Station, accusing Yakub Ali. The case has made hardly any progress.
In August last year, Sona Mia filed a complaint with the foreign ministry about his missing next of kin.
Sona Mia's is one of the thousands of families gone broke after their son, brother, father or husband went missing in search of a job.
According to Ovibashi Karmi Kalyan Programme, a migrants rights NGO, 11 percent of 400 foreign jobseekers from Araihazar and Narsingdi Sadar upazilas went missing after taking the sea journey to Malaysia, while 6.33 percent died between September and December 2013.
An investigation by Development for the Disadvantaged People, a Sirajganj-based NGO, found that some 4,000 jobseekers from the district took such journeys in 2013, of whom 400 have been missing.
The Daily Star estimates around 2.5 lakh Bangladeshis took sea journeys in the last eight years, but the actual number of the missing, murdered, jailed or dead on way to Malaysia or Thailand is still unknown.
FAMILIES IN RUINS
Head of the eight-member family, Sona Mia makes Tk 300 a day by pulling his rickshaw van. His daughter Salma stays at his house with her two-year-old daughter Moni.
Salma works at a weaving factory at the village for Tk 3,000 a month. Sona Mia's five-year-old grandson Siam is with him as his daughter-in-law Ruma stays at a relative's house as a domestic help.
Instead of sending his sons Ramzan, 7, and Sajar, 10, to school, the van puller sent them to a furniture workshop to get them ready for jobs.
"I don't know where my boys are, but my inner self says they have been languishing somewhere and will return someday," said the father.
Sanwar Hossain of Kashatbaria village in Shahzadpur, Sirajganj said his nephew Nabi Hossain, 27, disappeared in February last year.
A few days later, they learnt that Nabi has been lured by a manpower broker into leaving for Malaysia through sea.
After 17 days, Nabi called them and said he was in a jungle in Thailand. He cried for sending Tk 2.5 lakh to a certain mobile phone number, saying that traffickers would dump him into a river for failure in paying the ransom like they did to three others.
"We then sold our farmland and sent Tk 2.2 lakh. But after that we have no information about him," said Sanwar.
As Nabi remains traceless for such a long time, his aging father Mozammel Ali has become mentally unstable.
Without their breadwinners, many of the families fell into poverty and don't know when their loved ones would return.
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