![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
Some 41 workers, who were discriminated and terminated by their Malaysian employer, received around Tk 10 million as compensation after a protracted legal fight. Those of you who have seen My Migrant Soul and saw the plight of the workers in Malaysia, will be able to relate to what great legal victory this is. Again, where the government is supposed to stand up for the migrant workers' rights, it is doing nada. It is the NGOs like Shishuk and Tanaganita which are coming forward to work on cases like this. UK's migrant workers alone contributed almost 300 million pound to Bangladesh economy in 2003. Add the contributions of the middl east workers and you will see how these people are the biggest contributor to foreign exchange reserve that our foreign minister is so proud about. Yet, he is not willing to do anything about their horrific plight. Recently, sickened by all these a few of these workers in Jordan attacked the Bangladeshi consulate. We can only imagine what made them do it. We, at drishtipat, always tried to highlight this issue by film screening and portal sites. However, we have been unable to come up with any project. For some reason, among the educated migrants to North America and Europe, this issue does not appeal that greatly.Admit it, when you saw the lack of English skills and nervous migrant workers at the Dhaka airport, you were annoyed. Bothered that they are taking too much time. When they sat next to you,
at Emirates or Gulf Air, you were upset at their lack of ettiquette. But none of us cared to think a bit deeper about the moving story of journey that each of them held.
If you have a spare moment, read this piece by Afsan bhai called "Are Mishkins people too. It will make you think twice when see these people in the airport again.
For many survival is impossible in Bangladesh and thus we have the expatriate crowd. But they are not the non-resident Bangladeshis of the USA and other developed countries including a few in the Middle East who often write to The Daily Star. They are mostly the desperate poor who populate the lowest end of the job market anywhere in the world. They are a new category of people, "The Miskins". They will not stay back but send their money home and often can't even read our paper.
Neglected by the national authorities, hounded by the police of their countries of work, they are the most despised and denigrated lot anywhere who provide the valuable foreign exchange with which we make foreign trips as VIPs.
For them making a trip abroad is part of the survival strategy, learnt over centuries. They have no option to make some decent money except to leave home and return. They are not Chand Sawdagar but his boat assistant who never gets mentioned in myths.
Unless you have seen them where they work you won't know to what depth of indignity they are made to descend into to make money to send home.
"I ran for few miles across the jungle to escape capture by the police. Finally, I reached Kuala Lumpur after three months. I had spent one lakh to reach there. I found work in construction site carrying bricks a few months after I landed. It's black market work. But police raided the site and I was arrested. After three months in jail I was let go and deported. I went with a lakh and came home empty."
This was Malaysia from where lakhs of working Bangladeshis are going to be forced out because the Bangladeshi officials didn't bother to cover the interest of these ordinary Bangladeshis. They are going to be thrown into jails and then shipped home. Media will pick up a few sob stories and then the episode will be over. Hopes generated will be crushed and some hopes will never flower. Even as I write I feel the silliness of my language, the inadequacy of words to express what it means to have no future and no multiple visas to a western country.
Another good but long read is the recent HRW report
September 30 2005, 14:47:12 UTC 6 years ago
September 30 2005, 14:49:16 UTC 6 years ago
a congenital mistake,i presume?
No, i don't think miskins are people...they are miskins...and as for those with bangladeshi origin, i got only one thing to say "Dude, you were born in a crap hole with enriched lands full of chiffon wearing fiends and gal's with "glass wearing" dads(who some is also called the father of our country)....what do you expect?".......The only real mistake they made was to be born in BD, rather than to leave it...lets see how two patriotic nerds talk shall we?:-----------curtains------------
Nerd 1: amar sonar bangla, ami tomai bhalo bashi...
NErd 2: indeed, tomar ongodeshe koto muktar mela...tomar sorbange koto sojib hashi.
Nerd 1(whispering now):Say, nerd 2 tomar pola ekhon new york e na? To porashuna kemon hochcche? bhulau ekhane pathaio na...desko to sesson jot kemmon...ar ei kuttar bachhader nijeder moddhei mair-pit koire morte dao.
Nerd 2(Whipering too):Ja koiso dosto....tobe amader party work chalai jaite hoibo...after all amagor polader to ai deshe aina kosto dao jai na...eikhankar "worthless minions of satan" der loo haowa laiga jabo
------------------Curtains--------------
Our country is now full of such gay dweebs...who just talk and talk and talk and write hyper-gay columns about how humane behaviour should be revived,how people should get back their rights and other crap like that. Then they sit around in their cozy den's and read "Angels and demons"....there's no such things as "practical action"..i don't think those "miskins" would be treated any better in their "Sobuj samola sosso bhora matribhumi"....in a land ruled by morons and opposed by the same, uncertainity is a spectra that looms everywhere....We don't need dweebs like Md Jafar Iqbal or Dr Kalmal Hossain or Dr Iunus...."Ausi" is no longer stronger than "moshi" in bangladesh...it will never be, as we live in a land where binary logic is obsolete....where "Asun amra ek hoi" is blasphamy...we need action, action such as the bear hall putch in Deutchesland in 1923...action not by commies,but by people....not by the army-chief-of-staff but by someone erudite who can blend in with corruption and then back-stab them at the right time,like brutus did to julias Caesar.....
I pity those with a bangladeshi origin like mine so...who despite being born in a land of riches , is outspoken and outdone by either corrupted minions or unheard voices with null output.
As for those in USA or any place else, my say will be "How ya doin?Can you take me there with ya?I can cook polao and make dim-bhaji...and i can dance at moonlight sinatra too(thats a bluff)"
And lastly....i don't know what the hell i just did..but,believe me about 56.37423% of that is quite true..Call Ripley.
Anonymous
September 30 2005, 21:25:43 UTC 6 years ago
Re: a congenital mistake,i presume?
Thanks for your highly productive post. I am sure this will add a lot of value. In fact, the main thing about the article was showing how a few people fought the case for 7 years to win the compensation. They were taking "practical action" while you were complaining about your sorry self. You are trying too hard to show that you are a rebel. Use your effort in something useful for a change. Your kind of people are known as "tryer". These are the kind who are the most passive and sissies when you meet them in person but all of their aggression comes out when they are online and when it is easy. I PITY THE FOOL!!October 1 2005, 01:23:50 UTC 6 years ago
Re: a congenital mistake,i presume?
hey, that was well... "OUCH'..to tell the truth..these so called "rebels" that you presume we are will never be given the chance to prove ourselves...its nothing to fight 7 years for a million doller compensation...I've seen situations where a women had to marry off her 12yr old daughter and then stand in court fot twelve more because she was nearly burned to death by er inlaws...no, so called "NGO's" or "Developement Organization" with HQ's in gulshan came to their resque.No draft of "Sheer bureacracy" or "Great political and international staratgy" helps her....this kind of things are happening all over the country.But noooo...all you can see bangladeshi's doing all over the world is politics...if we were so successful, those workers would've never taken the venture of travelling outside..if you'r "talks" and "columns" were so successful, the govt would've taken strict mesures in a long-term basis...spoken words don't entwine the authority of BD...back-stabbing does...As for us "rebels", you can call us tryers i guess..because in our age and situation where we have to compete with 4123 other students for the admission of single post in a University,all we can do is try...but why can't you make a difference with photography and poems?Why can't literature teach those political-oscar-wildes a lesson in humane behaviour and patriotism?I'll tell you why...because authority here depends on the act of violence and shameless gold-digging....no matter how hard we try posting stuff in LJ about "OMG, look at those poor workers in Malaysia and those in Dubai, working their ass out to get a compensation...to get proper respect" , we won't help those who live in dry and dirty dorms...those who worl 16 hours a day like mules...in deep dark caverns of malaysia,UAE and singapoure..those who can't see or hear the melancholy in their mother's eye because their "O so friendly bangladeshi foreign office" rejecated and berayed them....when your gums are rotten from inside it won't help if you brush regularly...you have to take those gums out and replace them with new,materialized organic things..thats is what needed in BD, why don't you give us "Tryers" a chance when we grow up? Who knows...we might be able to show that blending in with the corrupted ones and poisoining their idology from inside is infact the best startgy there is.lastly (again)..man, I'm like just passed from NDC..what would i know of international politics?What would i know of social prejudice? but instead of watching indian idol 24/7 i do try to reason with things a bit...as far as anything in vice-versic arguments go,here's something on the house:
Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.
Mark Twain
September 30 2005, 16:58:22 UTC 6 years ago