KARACHI, Nov 2: Young Imran Asif was among the 250 Pakistani men whose hopes of making a fast buck were dashed sooner than they were ready to believe.
When embarking on a journey to the promised land, he thought that all his sufferings, a result of grinding poverty, would come to an end. Little did he realize that the bubble of his high expectations would burst half way through his journey, thanks to the manipulations of his remorseless agent back home.
The tales of his fellow travellers were scarcely different.
Asif, together with the rest of the company, was arrested and convicted for trying to use Sri Lankan soil for his illegal journey to some European country.
Hailing from Gujrat, he had left for Colombo in June 2003 with valid legal documents and visa. He managed to reach Sri Lanka using the services of a recruiting agent, who had promised him and others to take them to Europe through a ship waiting for them in the Sri Lankan waters.
“I landed in Colombo and entered the island safely, where a Sri Lankan man contacted me and others and after a few days took us on boats to be boarded on the ship waiting in the open sea,” Asif told dpa in FIA lockup in Karachi.
“We were caught in the open sea on our way to the ship by the Sri Lankan authorities, and brought back,” he said.
Asif was among the lucky few who returned safely. Others were not so fortunate. Stories of arrests and deaths of such illegal immigrants keep appearing in the Pakistani media.
On Oct 30, a small boat loaded with 723 illegal Pakistani immigrants berthed at the Karachi Port. They all had been deported from Muscat.
Some of them were arrested for overstaying but a majority was detained for crossing into Muscat illegally. The authorities in Muscat took them in custody after conducting a series of raids. They were languishing in jail for months awaiting deportation.
They were stuffed into a small boat to transport them back to their home country. Conditions in the boat were subhuman, witnesses said.
Recently, Iran had pushed over 150 Pakistanis who crossed into Iran illegally attempting to use the Iranian soil to enter some Middle Eastern state or Turkey for ultimately reaching any European country.
In early October, the Turkish authorities also arrested some 200 foreign nationals, a majority of them Pakistanis, for illegally entering Turkey.
Earlier still, Italy had arrested 12 Pakistanis and charged them with having links with international terrorist organisation Al Qaeda. Subsequently, though, they were absolved of the charge after an investigation found that they had entered Europe for a better future.
The illegal immigrants from South Asia is not limited to Pakistan alone. They come from Bangladesh and India as well, but Pakistanis dominate the number.
Many die in the desert, some experience death by suffocation in cargo containers on ships and some perish as their boats capsize while attempting to reach the shore. Many are shot dead by the border and coastal guards of the countries they try to enter.
A few of them do succeed in reaching their destination. Their peers look forward to having the same good luck. But lucky are even those who return home safely. — dpa
