A report goes like this: at least 22 migrants died in a boat tragedy in the Mediterranean Sea as the rubber boat carrying them left Tobruk, a port city in eastern Libya, on March 21 bound for Greece. But the boat lost its way and was afloat at sea for six days. Those in the boat faced severe shortage of food and freshwater. Many died of exhaustion and dehydration. Another report says, of those who survived the boat tragedy off the coast of Greece, 21 are from Bangladesh. Sunamganj police told the media that 12 of the dead were inhabitants of that district. As could be further gathered, the traffickers forced the surviving migrants to throw the bodies of 22 dead ones into the sea. According to the International Organization of Migration (IOM), 559 people died in the Mediterranean Sea during the months of January and February this year, while last year the number was 287.
This marks a sharp rise in the fatalities among those who wanted to go to Europe in search of job. In fact, it is the traffickers, who, with the help of dalals (middle men) lured the victims into this deadly boat ride to the sea. But are not those embarking on such perilous journeys in small rubber dinghies aware of the dangers lurking in the seas? No doubt, they are. But the dalals paint a rosy picture about their future once they are able to land in any of the countries in Europe. The dream is so powerful that nothing can stop the victims from undertaking the risky journey. The cruel traffickers are international robbers and their sole objective is to hold those hapless victims to ransom. Once the Europe-bound job-seeking youths fall into their hands, the torture to wring as much ransom as possible out of the victims’ families at home begins. Of course, the dalals here play the role of handmaiden of the international human traffickers. The dalals are people familiar with the victims of human trafficking in the name of informal manpower agents. It reminds one the plight of the boat people or refugees of southeast Asia in the 1980s. Those refugees would risk their lives in rickety fishing boats in the sea in search of work and better life abroad. Thai pirates often attacked these boats, kidnapped some of the people in the boat and sunk the boats in the sea. Then the kidnap victims’ unspeakable ordeal would begin in the hands of the pirates. The famous Time magazine in an article published in November, 1981 wrote, “The plight of the boat people began after the fall of Saigon in 1975, when increasing numbers of South Vietnamese began fleeing … in rickety fishing craft.” Similar stories of tragedy involving Rohingya people fleeing their homeland in Myanmar in the not-too-distant past in fear of their lives and sailing in traffickers’ boats in the sea to seek refuge elsewhere abound.
A report by a humanitarian information service, ‘RliefWeb’, provided by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), says: ‘Around 14,000 Bangladeshi nationals arrived irregularly in Italy via Libya in 2024 and an estimated 20,000 in 2025.’ In fact, Bangladesh has become the leading country whose overseas job-seekers use the Central Mediterranean route. But little is known about hundreds of others who could not make it to the shores of Italy or Greece. It is not hard to imagine what happened to them. And it’s not the mere statistics that so many people succumbed to the torture of human traffickers and so many drowned while others went missing that should concern us. For each victim had his own story and the story of the families whose beloved members they were. Did the successive governments ever maintain any record of how the families thus devastated by the tragic end of their loved ones in the distant seas are doing at the moment? But we love the remittance money the lucky ones who survived those tragedies send home!
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