Militancy allegations in Malaysia: Does it ring alarm bells for our manpower export?

Migrant workers arrested in Malaysia amid ongoing immigration crackdown. Collage: TBS

Last week, the Malaysian authorities announced that they arrested 36 Bangladeshis on suspicion of links to a radical militant movement. This has happened before — Bangladesh's economic mainstay, i.e., migrant workers being detained or deported on terrorism charges. 

Previously in 2016, Singapore nabbed 26 Bangladeshis that year for allegedly forming "a religious study group that spread the ideology of al‑Qaeda and Islamic State". 

The allegations were remarkably similar. 

Malaysian Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail told the media, for example, that the detained Bangladeshi migrant workers had created recruitment cells within their community for "indoctrination of radical beliefs, collection of funds for terrorist activities and overthrow of the legitimate government in their country of origin".

So, the alleged target of the detainees was to topple the legitimate government of Bangladesh. Initially, it seemed Malaysia itself had little to worry about.

And this is what the then Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said, "Fortunately they were plotting nefarious activities in Bangladesh, and not in Singapore."

"These discussions are concerning because they occur at a time when Bangladesh's labour market in Malaysia has been closed for nearly a year. This situation requires careful handling. If we fail to manage this properly, our labour market will suffer."

Shariful Hasan, Associate Director, BRAC

However, relief is not guaranteed for the host country, as both the Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam stressed that the target could shift to Singapore as well. "While they were planning attacks outside Singapore, they could have easily changed their minds and attacked Singapore," Shanmugam said.

Among the Bangladeshis detained in Malaysia, three have already been deported — all of them were arrested upon their return to Dhaka. However, Home Adviser Jahangir Alam Chowdhury stated that these individuals were sent back primarily because their visas had expired.

"We have not received any formal communication from Malaysia regarding their involvement in terrorism. The matter is being investigated, and we are in contact with the Malaysian government," he said. 

Malaysia and Singapore are two of the most advanced economies in Southeast Asia, and thousands of Bangladeshi migrant workers are employed in these countries, which are also major sources of remittance for Bangladesh.

In fact, Bangladeshis constitute the largest group of foreign workers in Malaysia, with 898,970 individuals, followed by those from Indonesia and Nepal, as revealed by the country's Human Resources Minister Steven Sim in February. On 3 July, Asif Nazrul, adviser to the Ministry of Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment, said Malaysia is expected to recruit 30,000 to 40,000 workers from Bangladesh over the next year. 

Singapore, on the other hand, hosts approximately 150,000 Bangladeshi migrant workers.

Therefore, when two key destinations for Bangladeshi migrant workers in Southeast Asia voice concern, it has the potential to adversely affect the labour market in the region as a whole.

However, when discussing Bangladesh's challenges with extremism, one must also ask another key question: What role are some individuals — previously detained on extremism charges but now roaming free — playing in spreading extremism among our migrants?

One such individual is Jasimuddin Rahmani.

His name is particularly significant because after Singapore detained Bangladeshis on extremism links, Bangladesh's then Joint Commissioner of the Detective Branch of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP), Monirul Islam, told the Voice of America that although Bangladeshi authorities did not find an ISIS connection, we have found that they are followers of Jasimuddin Rahmani [a cleric believed to be the chief of Ansarullah Bangla Team back then], and they were working to get him released from jail.

However, after the July Uprising, Rahmani was released. Some others previously accused of extremism were found creating a mob at a police station in Shahbagh to pressurise the authorities to release a person accused of harassing a female student at Dhaka University.

Concerns about the resurgence of extremist elements within Bangladeshi society have been reported in international media.

Given this backdrop, the recent arrests of Bangladeshi migrant workers on terrorism charges are particularly concerning.

BRAC Migration's Shariful Hasan described the recent developments in Malaysia as "alarming" and emphasised the need for Bangladesh to address these issues with patience and diplomacy.

"These discussions are concerning because they occur at a time when Bangladesh's labour market in Malaysia has been closed for nearly a year. This situation requires careful handling," he said. "If we fail to manage this properly, our labour market will suffer."

Following the incidents in Singapore, Shariful Hasan mentioned that BRAC conducted research to understand the situation better.

"We did not find a direct link between extremist tendencies and Bangladeshi migrant workers. However, there are certain factors among our migrant workers that could potentially mislead them. This risk exists and its outcome depends on the guidance they receive," he added.

Many Bangladeshi workers, he said, actually lack knowledge about what can be said in mosques and what not. At the same time, there is an online campaign targeting migrant workers with extremist ideas and discussions.

"Our migrant workers should be trained in the relevant laws and regulations to avoid getting into trouble — especially those concerning extremism," he said.

Sharif emphasised that Bangladesh must investigate the involvement of the accused workers with extremism, to determine whether they are truly involved and if they have received legal assistance.

"We have to handle this delicately and diplomatically so that, if they are involved in crimes addressed by law, it does not negatively impact the labour market," he concluded.

While Sharif stressed the need for delicate handling of the situation emerging in Malaysia, we were unable to obtain a comment from the Ministry of Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment. TBS also contacted Labour Counsellor Syed Shariful Islam of the Labour Welfare Wing in Malaysia, but he did not respond to our requests for a comment.