Bangladesh: Illegal Immigration and Internal Disturbances

In our previous article we tried to highlight how the Land Swapping Bill and Teesta Water Sharing was given top most priority after NDA formed the Government in the largest Democracy of the world. Both issues were long pending and our Prime Minister, Mr Narendra Modi took this up, though it took one year, but a consensus regarding Land Swapping was achieved at both the houses of Parliament. 

The major issue which remains unaddressed is illegal immigration across the porous border of India and Bangladesh. 4,096-kilometer (2,545-mile)-long international border, the fifth-longest land border in the world, including 262 km in Assam, 856 km in Tripura, 180 km in Mizoram, 443 km in Meghalaya, and 2,217 km in West Bengal. Apart from Illegal immigration from Bangladesh to India, the border is used as a route for smuggling livestock, food items, medicines and drugs from India to Bangladesh.

Though we are aware of the illegal immigration, but the Political Parties which formed Government of West Bengal never gave heed to it. Be it Left or the Ultra Left Trinamool Congress, used these illegal immigrants to their advantage by vote bank politics. Now with the recent crisis situation which arose due to illegal immigrants stranded on rickety boats in the Andaman Sea near Malayasian and Indonesian coast, it is evident that illegal immigration from Bangladesh to its neighbouring countries is a regular phenomenon. Moreover, Bangladesh has identified and accepted 716 migrants, lodged in the international camps in Malaysia, as its nationals.

Bangladeshis have few major reasons for illegally migrating. Firstly, fleeing poverty, secondly, escaping as Jamat-e-Islami and Ansarlluah has been banned in Bangladesh. Now if the readers try to understand out of the above mentioned two reasons which group goes where it is apparently very difficult to judge. Let us try to bring two news reports from two leading dailies in front our reader which will make the picture a little bit clearer.

The New York Times reports on May 20^th, 2015:

“Indonesia and Malaysia Agree to Care for Stranded Migrants” …..While the migrants from Myanmar may be allowed to apply for asylum, in Indonesia, Malaysia or perhaps a third country, those from Bangladesh are mainly economic refugees who are likely to be sent home, experts say.

They are likely to resist repatriation: Many have made great financial sacrifices to make the voyage and many have relatives working abroad whom they had planned to join.

“Those who are identified as Bangladeshi nationals, we will bring them back to our country,” said Khandker Mosharraf Hossain, Bangladesh’s minister for expatriates’ welfare and overseas employment. He called the decision by Malaysia and Indonesia to take in migrants “a very good decision because our primary concern was to save their lives.”

The Statesman, Bengal edition reports on June 01^st , 2015:

The Border Security Force (BSF) apprehended 400 illegal Bangladeshi immigrants and seized contraband worth over Rs. 7 crores across West Bengal in May, officials said.

"Besides a large number of contraband and fake Indian currency notes (FICNs), we have apprehended 400 illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in May from across the South Bengal frontier," a BSF officer said.

We hope by reading above two reports the intent of migration of those two different groups is clear. One group fled from poverty, seeking a better life in another country and the other group has entered another country to disturb its economy by circulating fake currency notes. A person who wants a better place for livelihood may choose any country as the destination, but a person whose intent is not honorable will select a country as a destination where his/her chances of getting caught is minimized. The language of Bangladesh and West Bengal being the same, banned outfits like Jamats are illegally migrating through the porous border of West Bengal and Bangladesh and settling. NIA investigation of Khargragarh Blast revealed how Jamats have spread their network in districts of West Bengal.

There have been many other instances when illegal immigrants from Bangladesh were caught from other parts of our country. On May 2015, 64 illegal Bangladeshi was held at Thane by Anti Human Trafficking Cell (AHTC) of the Thane police. They have been arrested under the Foreigners Act, 1946. Bangladeshi nationals have been involved in many crimes like carrying counterfeit currency that is brought from Bangladesh to India, an official of AHTC briefed the press.

After banning Jamat-e-Islami in 2013, the internal affairs of Bangladesh has worsen with the upsurge of fundamentalist group – Ansarlluah Bangla Team. Ansarullah Bangla Team killed atheist bloggers Avijit Roy at Dhaka University campus in February, Oyasiqur Rahman Babu at Tejgaon in March and Ananta Bijoy Das in Sylhet in May. Ansarullah was thereafter banned in Bangladesh.

Following the brutal murder of Ananta Bijoy Das on May 12^th, Taslima Nasreen tweeted, "Another freethinker writer-blogger was hacked to death in Bangladesh this morning. Bangladesh is worse than Pakistan." But someone with the Twitter identity oneofthemuslims @jihadforkhilafa replied: "@taslimanasreen u r also among the 84 who r on the hitlist. count ur days." The tweet was referring to a list submitted to Bangladesh's interior ministry in 2013 by a radical group asking for the writer-bloggers to be punished for their blasphemous comments.

Nasreen wrote in a blog post on May 30^th, "The battle between science and religion is perennial. Scientists don’t hack people who refuse to believe their theories, but fundamentalists do." "The politics of religious sentiments has taken a violent turn. The solution for this is not to protect religious sentiments. Rather, the opposite. It must be attacked constantly. Even more so than before. This is how people will eventually learn how to deal with it…….Otherwise, the people in the business of religion will destroy what is left of society," she added.

The Centre for Inquiry, a NGO, assisted in relocating the award-winning writer and human rights activist to the US last week after she was "specifically named as an imminent target by the same extremists responsible for the murders of Avijit Roy, Oyashiqur Rahman, and Ananta Bijoy Das". The Centre for Inquiry said that it "has established an emergency fund to assist free thought activists whose lives are under threat by Islamic radicals linked to Al Qaeda in countries such as Bangladesh".

With the increase in fundamentalist activity in Bangladesh, Government of Bangladesh is really in a hurry to amend the law. On Jun 01^st, 2015 Law Minister Anisul Huq has said, Bangladesh is amending the law to put Jamaat-e-Islami on trial for suspected war crimes. He also said, “But the bill will be tabled in Parliament when the government wants.” Law ministry officials say Jamaat can be outlawed if it is tried and convicted of war crimes. But at present, the International Crimes Tribunal Act (ICT Act) only allows trying individuals on war crimes charges. Most of the war crimes convicts are from Jamaat. Anisul Huq explained that the government was amending the ICT Act to bring Jamaat to justice and that the draft was awaiting Cabinet approval. The two international crimes tribunals earlier observed how Jamaat had substantially contributed to the formation of auxiliary forces during the Liberation War in 1971 to help the Pakistan Army. The tribunals dubbed it a ‘criminal organisation’ that played ‘a foul role’ during the war and helped commit genocide that was ‘worse after World War II’. But two top leaders of the party even served as ministers during a coalition government with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

Within preceeding few days, few other news were reported by various media regarding Bangladesh which are not encouraging.

1) Bdnews24.com reported on Jun 2^nd, Recently outlawed militant group Ansarullah Bangla Team in a letter has threatened to kill State Minister for Home Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal. The letter delivered to former Dhaka University vice-chancellor AK Azad Chowdhury at his house in Dhanmondi on Tuesday also listed six other people. Current VC AAMS Arefin Siddique received a similar threat by post two weeks ago. The names of 10 people, including Prime Minister’s Adviser HT Imam, were in that letter. The letter sent on Tuesday was sent by Ansarullah Bangla Team-13. The previous one was sent by ‘Alkaida (sic) – Ansarullah Bangla Team:13’. No one linked to the threat has been identified yet.

2) A report by Asian News International (ANI) says, Over two dozen high-definition images reportedly published in an Urdu-language Internet forum suggest the Taliban has successfully recruited Rohingya Muslims, Bangladeshis, and Indonesian nationals and are training them in an undisclosed camp in Myanmar.

3) Ei Samay, a Bengali Newspaper from The Times of India group published from Kolkata reported, the official website of North Bengal Agriculture University in Cooch Behar of West Bengal was hacked on Sunday by a group calling itself the United Islamic Cyber Force, a varsity official said. In the same news Ei Samay reported, a man named Abdullah-Al-Ghalib, suspected to be a terrorist recruiter of Islamic State (IS), was arrested by Dhaka Police on May 30^th. 40 Jihadi books on IS and Al-Qaeda, 4 computer hard disk, 2 disc drive and a passport was recovered from him. On interrogation, police found that Abdullah-Al-Ghalib doesn’t have direct relationship with IS but he is an active member of Ansarullah Bangla Team.

So it is clear Bangladesh is in the middle of Terrorism. Terrorist generally chose a country which is economically backward, so that they can lure poor people to join their murderous game. No control over population in the name of Islam making people poorer. So people are leaving country on any given opportunity or joining path of terrorism for money.

Knowing that their economy is fragile, noticing Bangladesh government first banned Jamaat & recently Ansarullah; these terror groups shifting their base to West Bengal. Subsequent to Khagragarh Blast & NIA investigation which proved that many Jamaat leaders were staying in this part of the border from Left regime. They are getting Political shelter with the support of West Bengal’s “Secular” leaders.

So they are choosing North Eastern India & West Bengal to make Islamic Invasion. We have mentioned in our previous blog that Bloggers of Bangladesh were killed in recent past in the cities Dhaka & Sylhet which are very near to Agartala,capital of Tripura. Tripura is still ruled by left. It is clear to satisfy their section of Bangladeshi immigrants they have lifted AFSPA after 18 years.

Amidst of all these, a bus service ‘India Bangladesh Souhardyo Yatra’ is being planned as a step to open economic windows in South and South East Asian region, which will ply Kolkata-Dhaka-Agartala. Our request to our respected PM Mr Narendra Modi is to take an account of the prevailing situation of Bangladesh before inaugurating the bus service so that it doesn’t become another means by which illegal immigrants will cross the border.