Where is the Migration Law 2013?

ON October 19, 171 Bangladeshi citizens were rescued by Thai authorities from deep within a jungle in Thailand. This raised concern nationally and internationally about irregular migration of poor Bangladeshis and people from Myanmar to Malaysia through Thailand along the maritime route of Bay of Bengal. A large number of Bangladeshis are living in inhuman condition in the jungles of Thailand, waiting to go to Malaysia. Many of them are in jail, many have lost their lives and whereabouts of some others are unknown.

The extent of this particular migration flow is unknown. Some reports from media have estimated that 15,000 to 20,000 people may have migrated during last year through this route. The UNHCR's Irregular Maritime Movements report (January to June 2014) claimed that since 2012 till June 2014, 87,000 people had migrated to Malaysia by maritime routes through Bay of Bengal, via Thailand. 53,000 migrants reached Malaysia in the last year alone, which is 61% higher than the previous year.  

RMMRU conducted an initial investigation in seven upazilas of Sirajganj district. We were astonished by the number of cases that the victims' families and local representatives cited. According to them, more than 4,000 young men embarked on similar journeys in an effort to reach Malaysia, and more than 400 of them are untraceable. Narration of the incidents by these families sounds like a modern-day fairy tale. Someone's husband, someone's son or someone's brother had gone to work in the morning. At the end of the day, their tiffin boxes returned but they did not. As if some magician had played a trick and made them disappear, or the Pied piper of Hamelin had taken them away. The trauma of the families did not end there. They received a phone call weeks after the disappearance, only to fall prey to the extortionists and ended up paying around Tk. 2,200,000 to save the lives of their beloved ones. The mobile-to-mobile money transfer system, which was developed to take remittance transfer service to the doorsteps of migrants, ended up as a new means for transforming these poor families into absolute paupers.

Due to calm ocean conditions, October to January is the prime season for irregular migration and trafficking. This is why the network of informal dalals as well as traffickers is desperately recruiting aspirant migrants from certain parts of Bangladesh. Names of origin districts received by the media show that only a few of those belong to traditional international labour migration pockets. Most of them are from low international migration producing districts: Jessore, Khulna, Ragpur, Dinajpur, Rajshahi, Kurigram, Baguraa, Sirajganj, Satkhira, Natore, etc. During 2011-2012, Narshingdi used to be one of the major source areas of migrants, though their number has decreased.  However, some of them have become part of the network of informal dalals. An assessment of the areas shows that poverty level is higher in majority of these areas, social network of international migration is absent and, more importantly, the adverse affects of climate change are experienced more by some of these districts.

Illegal migration through this route had taken place earlier as well. However, the recent incidents revealed that an international network of criminal gangs; pirates of Andaman, Thailand and Myanmar; and employers in Malaysia and Thailand, who want to employ workers with minimum or no salary, have developed a vested interest in such migration.

The government of Bangladesh enacted Overseas Employment and Migration Act in 2013.  According to Article 34 of the law, the local police, TNO, elected local representatives, ministry of Expatriate Welfare and Overseas Employment and other related ministries, BMET and BAIRA were empowered to file cases against culprits. It is crucial that cases are filed under this law and that offenders be charged and face consequences. But it is unfortunate that till date no case has been filed under this law. Politicians, local level government representatives, administration, and law and security forces have conveniently shut their eyes and let such a heinous crime against humanity happen.

Representatives of civil society got together and expressed their concerns through organising a press conference, and came up with certain demands. They pledged to display black bands on International Migrants' Day (December 18) if the government did not act immediately in combating these issues. Furthermore, if the issues were not addressed, civil society bodies would rethink the observation of International Migrants' Day with the government.

• The government of Bangladesh should immediately create an inter-ministerial and inter-agency committee (including the Bangladesh Border Guard, Navy and Coast Guard)  to prepare and implement an action plan to reduce irregular maritime migration flow;
• Under this inter-ministerial committee, a taskforce should be formed with representation from security forces, local administration and representatives of Chittagong and Cox's Bazaar district;
• Exemplary punishment should be ensured to those who are involved with processing of irregular migration. This should be done either under Overseas Employment and Migration Law 2013, or Women and Child Trafficking Law 2012;
• An interstate joint commission should be formed immediately to stop this irregular and risky migration. This body should facilitate sharing of information and promote coordination to address flows of irregular migration;
• Irregular migration through the Bay of Bengal should be considered as an urgent issue at the next meeting of the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD);
• Bangladesh and Malaysian governments should reevaluate the Government to Government (G2G) agreement and reestablish formal migration process within these two countries;
• Under labour law, the government of Thailand does not regulate fishing boats which have less than 15 workers. Bangladesh should take the help of international forums to exert pressure upon the Thai government to bring such fishing entrepreneurs under the labour law of that country so that they cannot get away by employing Bangladeshi workers to work in slave-like conditions.
• The government and society at large should come forward to provide assistance to those families who have lost their beloved ones, who were the income earners of their families.

The writer is at the Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU), University of Dhaka.