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Migration Alert: Kerala Gangs Involved in Trafficking Humans to Israel

The onus is on the Indian government to follow transparent labour migration processes for West Asia. Reports indicate that gangs working out of some Kerala towns are “actively involved in trafficking humans to Israel”.

By M V Bijulal, 360info
New Update
Migration

The onus is on the Indian government to follow transparent labour migration processes for West Asia to keep the migrated workers safe. The India-Israel agreement on labour movement could be a game-changer. | Mark Maxwell | Credits: Flickr

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The onus is on the Indian government to follow transparent labour migration processes for West Asia.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Christianity’s holiest shrine in the world, is an unlikely place to lose yourself in Israel. Or so you might think. Not so for Kerala’s Christian tourists to this shrine.

In February 2023, when a Kerala farmer, who was said to be on an official delegation to Israel, went missing from his group, there was uproar in the media back home.  A Kerala priest who led pilgrimage tours from Thiruvananthapuram later revealed that six people from that group, which included several elderly women, had made themselves scarce.

Every year, thousands of Malayalees from Kerala migrate to the Gulf countries in search of jobs or to take up various types of employment there. 

Many remain in the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman for years, earning sufficient money before returning home to relative prosperity. The outmigration adventure, which began in the 1960s in dhows or country boats, has also been captured in popular cinema.

Alongside this routine labour migration of both skilled and semi-skilled workers to the Gulf – often deemed a success story – Kerala has also been a source of surreptitious illegal outmigration to not only the Gulf states but more recently to Israel, where conflict is a perennial danger. 

Reports indic

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