True Tragedy
When a country is so intolerably indigent that its young population must seek outside employment it is a living symbol of failure to provide for itself and its people.
Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries on the Planet. It is located 17,000 kilometres from Tunisia. In the chaos that has enveloped Libya, there are tens of thousands of Bangladeshis who are stranded within Libya, and roughly ten thousand who have managed to arrive in Tunisia, looking for safe haven.
These are disastrously poor people who have taken migrant employment in an attempt to lift themselves out of poverty. They were working for foreign corporations looking for cheap labour for their investments in Libya. With the near-collapse of the government as a result of a populist challenge to Moammar Gadhafi's tyrannical rule, all the foreign investors have fled. Leaving those whom they employ stranded, to cope for themselves.
Which they cannot possibly do. Most of these migrant workers have not been paid in months; they haven't the wherewithal to pay their passage out of the country. They trudge in groups for long distances, their meager possessions on their backs, only to have anything of value taken from them by armed, roving brigands. They had nothing when they arrived, they have nothing now, desperately attempting to leave.
Their country hasn't the means to rescue them. The vast numbers of Egyptian migrant workers have now been repatriated, taken back to Egypt in Egyptian and British ships. The refugee transit camp that held Egyptian migrant workers is now being prepared for the tired, hungry, thirsty Bangladeshis. Almost 13,000 have crossed over the border from Libya into Tunisia. The UN has 1,800 tents available for ten thousand people.
There is an additional 60,000 people who have been left behind. A Bangladeshi diplomat tasked to do what he could, is appealing for help from the European Commission. "We haven't received any help yet. People are suffering a lot." Some of the Bangladeshis report of having been beaten and threatened by Libyan pro-regime supporters.
They have been ill-done by fate many times over. A country incapable of supporting their basic needs. Foreign employers who transfer them to a country far from their own, and who employ them at very basic minimum rates. They have not been paid in months, and then left to fend for themselves in a strange country with no means at their disposal.
Theirs is the most desperate plight, the saddest, the most frightening and misery-laden.
Labels: Africa, Human Rights, Middle East, Troublespots
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, March 05, 2011
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