Tag: immigrant workers

Bangladeshi worker found dead with face smashed in

An undocumented Bangladeshi national has been discovered dead with severe head injuries at an uninhabited house in Laamu Atoll Gan Island today.

Ishag Yoosuf, the 65-year-old caretaker of the house, said he discovered the farmworker’s body at 7:00am. He is known as Bassan.

“I went to pick up some tools to paint my house. Bassan was lying face up on the veranda. His face was covered with a pillow. The pillow was all bloodied. The right side of his face was smashed in. Blood was splattered all over the walls up to 8 feet,” he said.

Bassan, a tall dark man in his late twenties, has worked in the Maldives for ten years, Ishag said.

The caretaker had last spoken to Bassan on Tuesday, but said he had not reported any problems.

“He told me he had asked the owner who is living in Malé if he could sleep in the house. There is no toilet there. Only the veranda he could sleep in. He said he was eating fine. Apparently he had paid a company to get food,” Ishag said.

The owner of the house, Thoha Waheed, denied Bassan had asked for permission to sleep at the vacant house.

“I don’t know how he came to live there. I know the man, but he never asked me to let him stay at the house,” he said.

The police said the murder occurred 24 hours before the body was discovered. The serious and organized crime department is investigating the case.

Bassan’s death is the third apparent murder of Bangladeshi workers this year. In March 22, a 25-year-old Bangladeshi named Shaheen Mia was stabbed to death in a Malé café.

Two days later, the naked body of a young man named Kazi Bilal was found with a piece of cloth around his neck in Alif Alif Atoll Thoddoo.

The vice president of the Human Rights Commission of the Maldives (HRCM), Ahmed Tholal expressed concern over the Maldives’ failure to protect migrant workers.

“We have been and still are unable to provide protection for expatriates,” he said.

Some 124,000 immigrant workers live in Maldives, the immigration department has said. Some 30,000 are not documented.

The former Bangladeshi High Commissioner for Maldives Selina Mohsin has described the situation of Bangladeshi workers in the country as “bizarre and horrifying.”

In 2014, the police rescued a Bangladeshi held captive in an accommodation block for migrant workers.

In April two migrant workers were kidnapped, robbed and beaten in a recruitment and employment agency in the capital Male’ City.

Another Bangladeshi was discovered in chains in 2009.

Likes(1)Dislikes(0)

Court releases Maldivian accused of kidnapping Bangladeshi migrant workers

The criminal court yesterday released a Maldivian man suspected of kidnapping, beating and robbing two Bangladeshi migrant workers.

Police officers broke into a second floor office apartment in Malé in the early hours of Monday morning after receiving reports of the kidnapping and arrested the 34-year-old suspect.

“Police found the two Bangladeshi men aged 23 and 24 in the apartment with noticeable bruises. Our investigations found the two Bangladeshis were robbed of a large sum of money,” said police.

The suspect was released after he was taken before a judge for extension of remand detention.

Police are searching for a Bangladeshi and a group of Maldivians suspected of involvement in the kidnapping.

Minivan News understands the Criminal Court released the suspect citing the lack of an arrest warrant authorising entry into the apartment. The court also said the suspect was not arrested from the crime scene.

However, police said “the suspect was detained at the crime scene.”

The Maldives Police Service with the help of the prosecutor general’s office has since appealed the Criminal Court’s decision to release the man.

According to legal experts, the constitution allows police to enter a private residence without a warrant under special circumstances.

“The constitution provides circumstances for police to enter a household without a warrant if they have sufficient evident of a life being threatened,” said Mohamed Shafaz Wajeeh, a lawyer.

“But establishing the circumstances in court would fall on the institution that wants to extend the period of custody.”

Speaking to Minivan News, the owner of the house in the Galolhu ward where the two Bangladeshis were held captive said the pair were kept at a leased second floor apartment.

“The police came around three in the morning. They called several times to open the door and broke in after the people inside did not respond,” she said.

“I think the Maldivian they arrested was not even sober.”

The leased apartment is the offices of Bisado Maldives, a recruitment and employment agency established in 2014, according to their Facebook page, and Brexco Private Limited, a registered construction company.

Local NGO Transparency Maldives (TM), which provides legal aid to locals and expatriates, expressed concern over the “lack of priority for foreign worker rights”.

“Expatriates are in a vulnerable situation in Maldives. It is very important that society sees and seeks the rights of foreigners at the same level as the locals,” said Ahid Rasheed, a senior project coordinator at TM.

The police also face challenges in successfully closing criminal cases involving foreign workers, the NGO noted.

“In many cases we have seen the sponsors send them back to their countries if any problem arises. So we have difficulties in judicial process, mainly in getting witness statement in courts,” a police media official said.

The former Bangladeshi High Commissioner for Maldives, Selina Mohsin, described the situation of Bangladeshi workers in the country as “bizarre and horrifying” after a spike in violence against migrant workers last month.

A Bangladeshi waiter in a local café was murdered in March and four others stabbed the following week. In 2014, police rescued a Bangladeshi held captive in a migrant workers accommodation block while a chained man was discovered by locals in 2009.

The vice president of the Human Rights Commission of Maldives Ahmed Tholal has described the recent spate of attacks against Bangladeshi workers as “hate crimes”.

Likes(0)Dislikes(0)

Maldives “enslaving” migrant workers by withholding passports, warns Indian official

A senior Indian diplomatic official in the Maldives has expressed concern over the ongoing practice of confiscating passports of migrant workers arriving to the country from across South Asia – likening the practice to slavery.

The diplomatic source, who wished not to be identified, has told Minivan News that although several government ministries were critical of the practice of withholding the passports of foreign staff coming to work in the country, the state had taken no action.

Some Ministries – such as the Education Ministry – themselves routinely confiscate passports of migrant workers.

“I’ve not met a single government minister who says that such a system [withholding passports] is legal,” the source said, claiming that they had seen little “real progress” from authorities in trying to address these concerns over the last 10 months.

The Maldives has come under strong criticism internationally in recent years over its record in trying to prevent people trafficking, with the country appearing on the US State Department’s Tier Two Watch List for Human Trafficking three years in a row.

In the report, the Maldives is mainly flagged as a destination country for victims of labour exploitation, particularly from Bangladesh and to a lesser extent, India, but was also noted as a destination for sex trafficking.

“An unknown number of the 80,000 to 110,000 foreign workers that government officials estimate are currently working in Maldives – primarily in the construction and service sectors – face conditions indicative of forced labour: fraudulent recruitment, confiscation of identity and travel documents, withholding or nonpayment of wages, or debt bondage,” the 2012 report notes.

According to the source within the Indian High Commission, by impinging on a person’s right of movement – such as by taking their right to travel freely between different countries – migrant workers without passports were essentially being subjected to “slavery” in the Maldives.

“Slavery is of course not permitted under Islam, but this system also incurs cost for the Maldivian people,” the source claimed, pointing to the rising costs of trying to attract skilled workers such as teachers to the country, when compared to other countries like Sri Lanka.

According to the High Commission, Indian workers experienced similar treatment with regard to their passports being withheld when they first began migrating to nations within the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

“This was at a time when there was not much opportunity for work for skilled Indian workers,” he said. “However, now they have the choice of where to work and conditions have greatly improved.”

The diplomatic source said that countries such as Saudi Arabia had moved away from keeping the passports of migrant workers, as well as ensuring improved working conditions so they could attract the best staff for positions.

From the perspective of the Maldives, the high commission representative likened the attitude of many of the country’s employers towards hiring foreign staff as being synonymous with “ownership”, something he said did not reflect the critical need for foreign workers in the Maldives – both skilled and unskilled.

“If you are giving visas to these people then they are obviously needed. But if you need something you must also value it. Should you buy a expensive piece of electronic equipment, you would not go throwing it around and treating it badly,” the source suggested.

Contacted about the passport issue, Abdul Razak Ibrahim, Director General for the Ministry of Human Resources, Youth, and Sport, forwarded enquiries to the Department of Immigration and Emigration, which he said now dealt with employment issues.

Both Immigration Controller Dr Mohamed Ali and Deputy Controller Ibrahim Ashraf were not responding to calls from Minivan News at time of press.

Indian concerns

The issue of retaining passports is one of a number of concerns about the wider treatment of migrant workers from India and the South Asia region in the Maldives.

Earlier this year, the High Commissioner of Bangladesh in Male’, Rear Admiral Abu Saeed Mohamed Abdul Awal, questioned the treatment of workers from the country, who he said were regularly being brought to the Maldives to perform unskilled work, usually in the construction industry. Awal alleged that upon arriving, expatriates from Bangladesh were suffering from the practices of “bad employers”.

“This is a real problem that is happening here, there have been many raids over the last year on unskilled [expatriate] workers who are suffering because of the companies employing them. They are not being given proper salaries and are paying the price for some of these employers,” he said.

Rear Admiral Awar added that it was the responsibility of employers to ensure expatriate staff had the proper documentation and suitable living standards.

Concerns about the treatment of expatriates from across the South Asia region were also shared by Indian High Commissioner Dynaneshwar Mulay. Speaking to Minivan News, Mulay has previously raised concerns over the general treatment of Indian expatriates in the Maldives, particularly by the country’s police and judiciary.

Mulay claimed that alongside concerns about the treatment of some Indian expatriates in relation to the law, there were significant issues relating to “basic human rights” that needed to be addressed concerning expatriates from countries including Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Likes(0)Dislikes(0)