DHAKA: Snatched by people traffickers in Bangladesh and forced onto a migrant boat, 14-year-old Absaruddin endured a weeklong nightmare in which he almost starved to death, saw his relatives killed and was forced to jump overboard after being attacked.

He lived to tell the tale after he and several hundred other Bangladeshis and Rohingya from Myanmar were plucked to safety Friday from their sinking boat and the waters by Indonesian fishermen, The Straits Times publishes this report on Saturday.

‘I want to go back to my home, I want to go back to my mother,’ he said, speaking from a building where some of the migrants were being housed in the city of Langsa in Indonesia, on the northeast coast of Sumatra, after recounting an ordeal that lasted almost two months.

The emaciated teenager, who comes from a poor farming family, wept as he talked on a mobile phone to his mother for the first time since he left southern Bangladesh, a media reporter said.

His mother could be heard weeping on the other end of the line.

BDST: 2028 HRS, MAY 16, 2015
RR/SMS