Neerav, a 32-year-old father of two from Bangladesh, was among 139 people rescued on November 6, 2024 from an unseaworthy wooden boat in the Libyan Search and Rescue Region. He spent over 10 hours on the lower deck with dozens of others, surrounded by fuel fumes and struggling to breathe.
*Name changed to preserve privacy.
Before the COVID 19 pandemic, I used to work in Malaysia a few months per year, which was enough to make ends meet.
When the pandemic hit, there was no work, and I had no way to provide for my wife and two children. I asked my uncle for help, who was part of the opposition party in our district. He helped me open a coffee shop, which became very famous. My business was running well, and I could give a more comfortable life to my children.
One day, people linked to the other main political party came to have coffee at my shop. When I asked them to pay, they started to hit me, I ran away from the shop. I knew they were not going to stop there. I learned that they had gone to my uncle’s house and stabbed him to death. I immediately hid my wife and children at the house of other members of my family to keep them safe.
When I came back to my shop, these people had destroyed my shop and taken all the money. I went home, and I found it completely destroyed. They took all the savings I kept inside, and they stole all my family’s valuables and the farm animals we had. I knew they would come after me too; I needed to flee.
I asked a contact who works at the airport to organize me to travel to Egypt, then Libya.
On my arrival, Libyan people took me and threw me in a car with 12 other people. We were kept in a house where we only received a bottle of water. In 15 days, we ate 8 times.
They asked for money; I said I had already paid. One day they brought us to the beach and forced us on a wooden boat. I didn’t even know where we would be Heading. I had just told these men I could not go back to Bangladesh because my life is in danger there.
All the Bangladeshi people and some Pakistanis were inside the boat, the Syrians and Egyptians were outside on the upper deck. There were 60 or 70 people there. We had no oxygen, and as the boat left, the closed space inside the boat filled with the fumes of the fuel. We couldn’t breathe. I threw up 32 times. A boy next to me had his leg burned by the fuel in the boat that had mixed with the sea water. His skin was coming off.
I remember slowly losing consciousness and then a friend shaking me so I would wake up. When I opened my eyes only three people were left inside the boat. I was so weak when I got pulled out of the lower deck, that I couldn’t walk but I understood that we were being rescued. I couldn’t believe it.
