Tale of slavery in sea

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November 18, Dublar Char
It was a grim reminder of modern day slavery when the navy yesterday rescued 106 people from Meher Ali Island in the Bay, 110km off Mongla. The cyclone that took away the lives of so many had worked as a bane for them when the navy rescue team reached them by chance.

Badly sun-burnt and injured from beatings by their “masters”–rich fish traders and one name was mentioned by everyone, Major (retd) Ziauddin, often dubbed in this inaccessible land as the lord of the jungle island–these people were tricked by middlemen who lured them with the promise of good jobs. Then they landed in hell–confined by the cruel sea on all sides and their cash and other belongings seized. All of them had a story to tell that sounded too grotesque to believe. Yet they were all true.

With closely-cropped hair, Sujon Barua, still in his teens, looked lost. A bad wound from the beating by the “masters” was oozing fluid from the back of his thigh. Sujon stands out in the group as he landed in the slavery trap while studying in a college in Dhaka.

“I am from a broken family and passed my SSC from Dharmaraj Bouddha Mohabihar,” Sujon, who hails from Rangunia, said. “I was then studying at Dhaka Abdul Aziz School and College. The classes closed for the Ramadan and I came to Chittagong and started working at the railway station as a coolie.”

One day a suave man approached him and said he can offer him a dream job–Tk 10,000 in salary for four months. His duty hours would be only four hours a day as a garden keeper. It was like the manna from the heaven for Sujon, who grabbed the “golden” opportunity. But, then the nightmare began.

“I was sold to a person known as Kohinur Majhi for Tk 1,000 and then packed into a boat with many others. After the night’s journey, I landed in this Sundarbans island, a land I have never been to before and only read about in books,” Sujon started weeping, recalling the horror days and nights. Then he wiped his eyes with his torn T-shirt and looked vacant for some minutes before he could regain his voice again.

Once in this far-off island, the thugs took away his mobile phone, ID card, educational certificates and bag so that he cannot escape. Even his computer training certificate was confiscated. His dream job turned up to be sorting fish and put them on stacks to dry in the sun during the day and working as guards at night. It was virtually a 24-hour duty often met with violent beatings.

“I begged them to let me go. I cried out loud and said, ‘You are my lost parents, let me go.’ But they whacked me with sticks. Whacked me and denied me my dinner,” Sujon started sobbing again. And when did he get this bad injury which is still looking fresh?

Then came out another macabre story. When cyclone Sidr formed in the Bay, the “masters” asked the slave workers to hang the dried fish up in the trees so that they are not damaged in the waves. And then they were asked to keep guard of the commodity.

But as seawater started to rush in, the workers ran for their life deep in the forest. The next day, they were huddled up and beaten up for negligence.

The stories were almost similar with others in the group. They were all lured by the human traders at railway stations with rosy pictures.

Zakir Hossain Raju, 25, limped to us with his swollen feet with a gash. His soles sounded hollow on the steel deck of the navy ship.

“I have a six-year-old daughter in Pirojpur. Will I find her again?” he asked us and then knew there was no answer. “They brought me here in the name of giving the job of a security guard. I was supposed to get Tk 1,800 a month. And here I am, without my clothes and penniless.”

Whenever they wanted to go home, they were asked to swim across the sea. When they wanted medicines, they were asked to jump into the shark’s mouth. They were sent to the forest for illegal logging. And their daily food was rice and lentil, that too often once a day. Often the fish that were rejected were given to them.

“All the boatmen of trawlers were asked not to carry us so that we cannot escape from the island,” said Alam Khan, 27, who came to Chittagong from Badarganj in Rangpur and then were picked up by the slave traders. “We were hardly allowed to sleep as we had to guard against robbers and tigers.”

Living in a constant state of fear, these people were too scared to ask anybody for rescue.

“When we reached these people, they came running to us, whispering if we could take them out,” said Commander AZM Jalaluddin, the officer coordinating relief and rescue operations at Dublarchar. “They told me their grim stories and we decided to rescue them. We will now give them food and first aid and then dispatch them off to Mongla. From there, the navy will arrange their return to home.”

As the scrawny, shrunken, scared figures huddled together on the deck of the offshore patrol vessel BNS Turag, the navy men served them rice, lentil and fish. Then their wounds were taken care of.

“Disembark them! The ship must leave now, tide is running low,” shouted Commander Jalal. And the men got up, tiredness showing on their bodies after a good lunch after so many months. They did not look like human beings, they resembled some demented souls. One by one, they got down to a country boat; an oil tanker was waiting a little distance away in the Bay.

Once on the deck of the tanker, the huge ship started moving. The men were all looking at us. One of them suddenly waved–it could be Sujon, from this far only the blue colour of his shirt could be seen. Then all 106 men were waving. They were waving to freedom.

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