Indonesia finds 193 Bangladeshis locked up in shop house

Reuters-Indonesian authorities said on Thursday, February that police had found 193 men from Bangladesh locked in a business premises in Medan on the island of Sumatra by human traffickers who had lured them with the promise of getting them to Malaysia. The men had entered Indonesia on tourist visas via Bali and the city of Yogyakarta with the intention of going to Malaysia for work, local immigration officials said. The men had been taken to an immigration detention center and would be sent back to Bangladesh, officials added. One of the men, Muhammad Makhobul, claimed that they were kept in a very crowded space and and some fainted. Authorities were first alerted to the case after neighbours had reported hearing suspicious noises coming from the building, according to local media. Officials said the men were not Rohingyas. Hundreds of Rohingya have landed by boat in Sumatra in recent years after fleeing Myanmar and Bangladesh, often intending to reach Malaysia. Myanmar regards Rohingya as illegal migrants from the Indian subcontinent and has confined tens of thousands to sprawling camps in Rakhine state since violence swept the area in 2012.