Bangladeshis who are oppressed at home and abroad

A difficult life: Bangladeshi child labourers washing their hands before lunch at an aluminium pot factory in Dhaka. More than 6.3 million children under the age of 14 are working in Bangladesh, according to a Unicef report on child labour.

Last year, the Global Slavery Index put Bangladesh 10th on the list of countries with the highest number of enslaved people.

In the last two months, more than 170 men, mostly Bangladeshis, have been rescued from human traffickers in the jungles of Thailand. Some of the men described how they had been offered work, but when they showed up, were drugged, tied up and dragged onto boats where they were beaten and starved. The news caused outrage among Bangladeshis, many of whom blamed their government for failing to protect its citizens. Others expressed dismay at the discovery that this kind of modern-day slavery still exists.