KHOST CITY (SW) – For years, Ismail was happily running a small shop in Khost city until economic hardships combined with false promises of a human trafficker made him change his mind.
As a man of good manners, Ismail had a big circle of friends in his hometown. However, due to growing financial impediments, he made a difficult and hard decision to migrate to another country. After a long and tiring quest, Ismail found a man on the social media who promised to take him to Turkey for 500,000 rupees.
The human trafficker, however, did not keep his promise, and switched off mobile communication with the family of Ismail halfway through the journey. This prompted Ismail’s father to desperately locate the trafficker via mobile phone, and pay extra money for his safe return to Khost in Afghanistan.
As per the Article 14 of the Law on Human Trafficking and Migration, those encouraging people towards human trafficking or collaborating for it shall be imprisoned for medium term. The fact that human traffickers are usually stationed in destination countries makes it difficult to trial them in courts in the host countries.
Following this bitter experience, Ismail now wants his countrymen not to fell prey to the vicious plans and false dreams projected by traffickers.
Commenting on this, Hazratullah Arghon, professor at Khost’s Shaikh Zahed University, clarified that all those collaborating with the human traffickers deserve legal punishment. He added if the victim loses his life during the journey, the traffickers is bound for life imprisonment.
Khost has a relatively lower rate of cases of human trafficking to other countries. Many residents of this province usually travel to Gulf countries for trade and labor purposes.
The tale of Ismail indicates that many victims of human trafficking do not get justice as their story gets lost due to no attention.
ENDS
