Harassment of Bangladeshis at KL airport
Mazharul Haq Lalamatia, Dhaka
Nowadays it is often learnt from different reports in the dailies that all types of skilled and unskilled workers from Bangladesh are harassed, jailed or tortured on different grounds while they work in foreign countries. We do not exactly know whether the government of Bangladesh is aware of it or has done anything to solve the problem.Now I would like to be specific on a certain matter that happened to me along with other friends in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia on 22 October 2005. Myself and some of my friends and relatives with their families were returning from the US on board a Malaysian Airlines flight. We arrived in Kuala Lumpur at 6:00am on 22.10.05. We had previous hotel reservations from the airlines, so we approached the immigration counter in the airport for transit visa to avail the hotel reservation. As we had done on many occasions in the past. We had the connecting plane with the same airline for Bangladesh on the same day at 10:00pm at night. As Bangladeshi citizens we were rather shocked to know that no Bangladeshi passport holders would be allowed to leave the airport. We tried to explain our difficulties, but to no avail. On the other hand, passport holders from different countries coming from the USA in the same flight like India, Pakistan etc were allowed to go to the hotels in the town outside the airport. We tried to convince the immigration authorities saying that we had enjoyed these facility earlier and wanted to know why it was being denied all of a sudden. They informed us that restrictions had been imposed recently only for the Bangladeshi passport holders. May we know from the government department concerned why we were harassed at the airport and what was our fault? Is it that we had Bangladeshi passport with us? I request the government of Bangladesh to kindly learn about the issue in detail from its Malaysian counterpart; so that other travellers may know the exact situation and plan their flights accordingly.
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