THE next time we meet Karim, it is a month later on Hari Raya Aidiladha, and we take him and another Bangladeshi student on a quick tour of the city they so desperately want to see. First KLCC, then Dataran Merdeka. He loves every sight: “Bangladeshis call Malaysia the ‘Europe of Asia’,” he says as he poses in front of the Royal Selangor Club. He wants a photo there because a famous Bangladeshi singer filmed a music video against this exact backdrop. He joins a few other Bangladeshis for a short kickabout on the field. But when we ask him about his studies, a shadow passes over his face. He is reluctant to discuss the matter, but we learn that he applied to study an engineering degree, but found out that his college doesn’t even offer that course. His friend was more forthright: “The agent is a liar.”

The cheating continues the moment students like Karim land in Malaysia. Agents are either based in Bangladesh or in Malaysia. Either way, they would have representatives in the other country ‒ a Malaysian-based agent would have someone working for him in Bangladesh, and vice versa. When a student lands in Malaysia, the Malaysia-based agent takes over. Students rely on this agent, because they have little choice ‒ they don’t know how public transportation works, they have few friends if any to turn to, and they have a limited command of English. Just as agents in Bangladesh prey on their desperation for a better life, the agents in Malaysia prey on their vulnerability here. The lies never end, and the agent profiteers off the student at every opportunity.

At the airport, where immigration officers are under instructions to detain Bangladeshi students until college representatives arrive to receive them, agents often extort them for a little extra. “I waited there for two days,” tells Farid, the one who works at the warehouse. The agent wanted him to pay RM200 for “airport pickup”, but Farid refused on principle, arguing that it wasn’t part of the initial agreement. At the end of two days, with no food or water except what he could buy from overpriced airport stores, he relented.

More cheating followed. The agent took his passport to apply for a student visa. All international students, having been accepted by a local college, arrive in Malaysia on short-term single-entry visas. After they arrive, students need to submit their passports, academic records and a medical report to their colleges, who will apply for a student visa on their behalf. But Farid’s agent refused to return his passport until he paid an additional RM650. At every step, there is an agent telling him what to do and how much to pay.

TO meet a college agent, we made up a factory. It would be a garment recycling factory somewhere in Kepong, where old clothes would be sorted, packed, and shipped to foreign buyers. An entirely imagined factory, of course. One of us would be a factory manager, looking to smuggle in migrant labour from Bangladesh through student visas.

“I brought in 8,000 students from Bangladesh,” the agent boasts. “3,500 was under ___ College, 2,500 under ____ College, and 1,500 under ________ Language Centre.” Since when? “Since 2013.” The agent is thick set, clearly non-Malaysian, with what seems to be a large scar under his left eye. His hands are stocked with expensive-looking rings and a gold watch. He claims to represent ___ College, a well-known college operating from a mall in the heart of Kuala Lumpur. Through further undercover work, we verified that he indeed works from an office within the college, and staff members refer to him for matters related to international students.

“For colleges, we have ____ College, _____ College, _____ College,” he claims. “We also have a language centre. All of these are like our joint venture companies.” An ownership check on Companies Commission of Malaysia’s (SSM) registry shows that the directors at two of the colleges he mentioned are the main players in a separate business that offers “education consultancy for foreign students” on its website.

The agent goes on to sketch out on a notebook how he can give students visas for up to 10 years ‒ first enrolling them as language students, before offering them diploma, degree, masters and PhD courses. If the fees related to higher levels of study are an obstacle, he suggests that students enlist as diploma students, then drop out of courses before graduation and transfer to other colleges for another diploma course.

THIS is the root of the problem. All the colleges connected to this scam are clearly run for profit alone, to smuggle in migrant labour. The education of its students is barely considered. In a written reply to our queries, the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) confirmed that four private higher education institutions (HEIs) have had their international student licenses revoked since 2015. Officially, it was for rather generic reasons, but sources reveal that all four of the colleges were booked for unscrupulously bringing in large numbers of international students ‒ by the thousands ‒ with ___ College being one of them.

Other agents and college representatives we met undercover sell us the same line. One manager of a language centre in Kuala Lumpur claims he can offer up to three years’ visa by moving students around in different language courses. He also claims he can pay off immigration officers who come to check the centre’s premises. A college marketing representative we met through another agent tells us that his college, a mid-sized college, only takes “clean” students ‒ meaning genuine students with proper qualifications, but that “it is up to (the agent) to make it clean the way he wants to make it clean.”

Through nine months of investigations, we compiled a list of over 20 colleges that show signs of involvement in student trafficking. Undercover visits to some of these colleges reveal empty classrooms and deserted offices. Some colleges don’t even bother to set up classrooms, merely operating from small office lots. These colleges have become an underground system to recruit migrant labour, and genuine students are the collateral damage.

MAHFUZ’S eyes tear up as he speaks about his family. He had been defiant, determined, and even angry for most of the conversation, but the thought of his father, mother, and young brother back home in Bangladesh changes his tone.

“They don’t know what I do here in Malaysia,” he says in a combination of broken English and Malay.
“And why didn’t you tell them?” we ask.
“Pain,” he replies, patting his hand on his heart. “Pain.”

He is speaking to us at his favourite hangout spot in Kuala Lumpur, a Bangladeshi restaurant in the heart of the city not far from the gleaming Petronas Twin Towers, right behind one of the city’s most popular party streets. When it’s quiet, you can almost hear the EDM pumping in the air.

And yet, it feels like a different world. On this particular street, we’re surrounded by dilapidated low-cost flats, and everywhere we turn, we find victims of human trafficking. Just like Mahfuz.

Four years ago, Mahfuz was halfway through a four-year degree course at Michael Madhusudan University College in Bangladesh, studying philosophy. He then met a college agent who sold him an exciting idea. He could get a much more prestigious degree in Malaysia, and get paid much more working in KL, where there are plenty of great job opportunities.

Mahfuz’s family were desperate. His father had suffered two strokes, and could no longer work. His brother is only ten years old. Their hopes and dreams lie squarely on Mahfuz’s shoulders. So they took the deal. They scraped all their savings and even took out a loan to pay the agent. Mahfuz quit his degree course, believing he was doing the right thing for his family.

But it was all a lie. The college in Kuala Lumpur was fake. It didn’t offer any classes. They extorted Mahfuz for more money, then withheld his passport. There was no cushy job, there was no prestigious degree. Mahfuz was left to rot.

With no other choice, Mahfuz started working at construction sites so he could send some money home. And just like that, four years have passed. He could speak English once, he explains, but now he’s forgotten how. Four years in a construction site can do that.

THIS is where the worst cheating happens. Genuine students, having paid exorbitant fees to arrive here, having been further extorted for more money at every step, finally realise that they will not get an education.

Farid tells us how his college was like: “I visited the whole college, and I didn’t see a single class in session. The classes are all empty.” He describes how there were many students waiting for their student visa documents, but most of them were in fact there for work, not for studies.

It was at the college that Farid realised he couldn’t study the course he wanted. He had asked his agent to apply for a course in software engineering, but in the college offer letter (which students receive in their home country, when a college accepts their application), he realised that he was only being offered a diploma in culinary arts. He questioned his agent, who told him he could apply to change his course when he arrives in Malaysia. The college flatly told him it wasn’t possible to do so, unless he sees out his current student visa and applies for a new one next year. That would mean paying another agent, again.

“I came for studies, only for my studies,” Farid says, angry. “But when I came here, I was disappointed.” His tone shifts to despair: “My dream has fallen down. Everything I thought before is now broken.”

Around the same time, Farid received word that his mother had fallen ill, and her medical bills are taking a toll on the family. Disillusioned and desperate for money, Farid chose to work so that he could recoup some of his family’s investment in his education.

THAT’S how college students, cheated, extorted and now disillusioned, become criminals. Samin, a student at a college in KL when we spoke, has also resorted to working. He is an electrician at a construction site. His agent in Bangladesh peddled him one of the most common lies agents tell students ‒ he can work part-time while studying to pay for his education. Only when he arrived did he realise that working under a student visa is illegal.

According to Malaysian laws, international students are not allowed to work, not even part-time, except during long holidays, with special permission from their college and the Immigration Department. If caught, students face up to five years imprisonment, RM10,000 in fines, and even whipping. Worse, they would be deported at the end of the sentence, and their passports blacklisted, potentially barring them from seeking education in other countries.

It is an astonishingly common narrative among Bangladeshi students. Over the course of nine months, we logged over 30 cases where international students have been lied to, exploited, extorted, and left with no education. It’s a recruitment system that exploits the students’ vulnerability for profit. By definition, that is human trafficking.

“This is human trafficking, because all the elements of human trafficking are there,” explains Aegile Fernandez, director of migrant rights advocacy group Tenaganita. “Anyone could be a victim of trafficking, not just labourers or sex workers. In these cases, the victims are students.”

Ashik agrees: “Yes, of course this is human trafficking. Agents and colleges have all the power over these students, so they exploit them. It’s big business ‒ not just involving thousands of ringgit, but in the millions.”

WE followed the trail of exploited students all the way to Bangladesh. Here, in the frantic, congested, perpetually gridlocked capital city of Dhaka, we came across streets full of college students, easily identifiable by the college IDs around their necks or the backpacks on their shoulders, milling on the streets outside their colleges, waiting for their next class. Just next to Dhaka University, the country’s largest higher education institution, there is an entire market dedicated to producing, repurposing and selling secondhand textbooks. A sprawling complex of makeshift stalls connected by narrow alleyways, crowded with college students looking for books. This is clearly a country with a strong demand for tertiary education. And many are out to profit from this demand.

“Can you arrange a job for me if I get the visa through you?”
“We are sending you in student visa. But, if you want, we have our people over there who can help you for the job.”

We are listening to this conversation in a van, parked downstairs from a college agent’s office in downtown Dhaka. On this particular street, we see signboards advertising student visa services everywhere we look ‒ hanging from streetlights, crowded on shoplot facades, stenciled on walls, one was even neon-lighted at the top of a high-rise building ‒ and these signs often have logos of Malaysian colleges. We picked college agents from these ads, and sent an undercover journalist to meet them.

“You can surely work while you are in Malaysia,” the agent continues. “You won’t face trouble if you work while you study because you have all your (visa) documents as a student.”

This is the lie that trafficks thousands of students to Malaysia each year. Every agent in Dhaka repeated this lie to our undercover journalist. Some even encouraged him to work to fund his studies.

“What about attending classes?”
“Class schedule will be done according to your choice. Maybe you can attend classes two days a week. You can work the rest of the time.”

Many have fallen for these lies. When we described the cases of student trafficking that we encountered in Malaysia to college students studying in Dhaka, none of them were surprised. Almost everyone knew someone who had been cheated while studying in Malaysia. Through our project partner, Bangladesh’s leading English newspaper The Daily Star, we interviewed three students who were recruited to study in Malaysia, paid exorbitant fees, but returned without an education.

One of them, a young lady, tells us how her college in Malaysia never held a single class. She was sent out to work in a restaurant as part of the college’s “internship programme”, and had her passport withheld by the college. Her husband who was studying (and working) with her, became undocumented after a year. He was caught by immigration officers and imprisoned for three months. Another student quit his course because the quality of the education offered at his college was too poor. We asked these students why they never reported their situations to the Malaysian authorities. Always, the reason they cite is fear.

AT night, at the end of the city tour, we send Karim home. We’re surprised when he tells us that he stays at an upmarket gated community just outside Petaling Jaya. Following his directions, we drive through the guardhouse, past rows of bungalows, past a landscaped lake with garden paths packed with residents on their post-dinner walk. But at a left turn beyond the glow of streetlights the asphalt turns to gravel, and we start to worry. Is this really where you stay? Yes, just further on, the entrance is on the right. Inside high zinc fences, in ramshackle blocks of plywood stacked two high, is where Karim is staying. It’s a kongsi. Apparently his agent, who has lied to him about his studies, is now putting him up at a construction worker’s hostel. We immediately advise him to lodge a complaint with Tenaganita, but Karim refuses. He’s afraid.

This is why the cheating will not stop. Traffickers continue with impunity because trafficked students have no safe avenue for redress, so they don’t lodge complaints against their traffickers. Most migrant rights NGOs in Malaysia are focused on migrant labour issues, not migrant students. Similarly, the Bangladeshi High Commission has not recorded a single complaint from students. MOHE has a complaints system, but most students don’t know about it, and it has only logged 20 complaints related to international students since 2013. Students also fear retribution from their colleges if they complain.

Still, that means over 40,000 Bangladeshi students have been accepted to study in Malaysia over the past three years, and from what we’ve heard, almost all of them were trafficked, or at least victims of some form of exploitation.

And with the recent clampdown on undocumented migrants, many of these students, who are also undocumented now, are being hauled up for immigration crimes. The government had run a re-hiring programme to legalise undocumented migrant workers by granting them “E-kads” ahead of the clampdown, but remarkably, the agents found a way to use the programme to exploit their victims yet again.

Many student trafficking victims R.AGE spoke to saw the re-hiring programme as a way out of the situation they were living in. They were willing to pay supposed agents up to RM3,500 upfront, give them their passports, and pay another RM3,500 when their new visas are ready.

Tragically, Immigration Department director-general Datuk Seri Mustafar Ali confirmed to R.AGE that the scheme does not even apply to those on student visas. “If their purpose for coming to Malaysia is to study, then they have to study. After they complete their studies, they have to go back,” said Mustafar.

Of all the Bangladeshi students we met who applied for the programme, not a single one received an E-kad, and the deadline for applications passed on June 30. It’s common for agents to withhold passports from migrant workers to extort them for more money, so chances are the students will have to pay the agents the remaining RM3,500 anyway, just to get their passports back.

The good news is that both Idris and Mustafar are determined to set things right. Idris said MOHE will clamp down even harder on trafficking colleges and agents, and force them to pay for the victims’ education at another college. During a closed-door meeting with R.AGE to discuss possible solutions, Idris was visibly angered. “What these colleges and agents are doing is a sin! It’s sinful! I really feel bad for the victims,” he said, surrounded by some of his top officials. “But I don’t just want to use strong language. I want action. I want to put an end to this.”