Worse than slavery

• Savage human trafficker’s naïve victims

The world is nowadays witnessing two distinct types of immigration waves or flight of peoples from their hearths and homes, those fleeing civil wars or state repression based on ethnic or religious grounds, and the gullible and starry-eyed seekers of a better life in unfamiliar foreign climes, where the streets are metaphorically ‘paved with gold’. The first category of humanity has little choice, the sole hope left for entire families or survivors is to acquire international refugee status and merciful settlement in a receptive country, the second type is driven by the equally desperate motive of lifting their families out of dull and apparently fated poverty. Both tragically fall prey to ruthless human smugglers, ‘transporters’ who actually transport thousands of their credulous wards not to desired safe havens, but to the hereafter, often fully aware they are being sent to certain death.

The brutal murder of 15 foreign job seekers from Punjab in a particularly desolate and dangerous stretch of the Pakistan-Iran border, where even locals tread warily, was clearly a case of a tale foretold. A banned separatist has accepted responsibility (or criminality), but no less responsible for the latest shocking incident are the untouchable human traffickers, the hand-in-glove concerned agencies, and the governments, past and present, who have failed abysmally in providing gainful employment to their teeming millions (the former much-appeased voters). The familiar aftermath of such horrific situations are already in motion, the ‘inevitable’ escape of the big don involved and cosmetic arrest of some related ‘suspects’, the moving grief and pathetic plight of the victim’s near and dear ones, the ‘official’ funeral with some bigwigs in tow, the government’s ‘hand-wringing’ and vows to arrest those responsible, and the supposedly guilt-evading announcement of ‘compensation’ for the deceased’s heirs.

The courts needs to take suo moto notice in such cases, concerned departments to be watchdog-vigilant, laws made harsher, and above all, jobs provided, otherwise the natural urge and aspiration for financial security will drive more innocents to move abroad and into the unforgiving and fatal embrace of the human trafficking mafia.