Biharis: The Abandoned People
Naushad Shamimul Haq, Arab News
June 1, 2005
Abandoned by their own government to exist in squalid camps in a hostile country, the quarter of a million Pakistanis stranded in Bangladesh for over three decades have lost all hopes. It is pathetic that the country that played host to some three million Afghans after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan has chosen to forget its own people who sacrificed to protect its integrity and sovereignty.
Wars and conflicts have displaced millions of people around the world, but those who flee such conflicts normally receive international attention and extensive media coverage.
Internecine fighting among Afghan groups or conflicts in the Horn of Africa have drawn world reaction with aid agencies and UNHCR scrambling to help them. In the case of the stranded Pakistanis, if anybody knows, nobody has bothered to help alleviate their sufferings.
They have been denied refugee status because they are not considered displaced people. The stranded Pakistanis, or Biharis as they are called, have waited long enough more than three decades for their country to acknowledge their sacrifices and patriotism. Some 600,000 Urdu speakers who supported the Pakistan Army during the war with India in 1971 were branded traitors by the Bengalis. The Pakistani Army laid down its arms and the Bengalis won an independent country.
The Biharis were rounded up, their houses, businesses and property confiscated. They were herded into makeshift camps where they have been confined for decades. They have suffered murder, rape and abuse at the hands of the Mukti Bahini, the Bangladeshi freedom fighters.
Most of the Biharis live in camps and struggle to make both ends meet. The meager quantity of wheat doled out to them by the International Committee of the Red Cross has been stopped recently, making life even more difficult for many of them.
Occasional high-level meetings between Pakistani and Bangladeshi leaders have turned a spotlight on the plight of these people but apart from the media raising the issue, nothing has been done for their repatriation and rehabilitation.
Loraine Mirza’s book The Internment Camps of Bangladesh details their miseries in an eloquent manner. Here are excerpts from the book.
This man’s attitude mirrored the ordeal of the quarter of a million stranded people left to die in internment camps. Three decades is a long time. Hundreds of thousands must have passed away during these years.
Their dream of returning to their country was never fulfilled. Now it is time the government of Pakistan and the international community played their roles in alleviating the miseries of these people. They have suffered long enough.
it's so sad that they haven't done anything for them, not even made any attempts since the 90's to bring them to pakistan. i feel so bad for them: they might as well have stayed in india.
no space for bringing kala biharis in from 35 years, but will bring in a million plus fairskinned afghan refugees, and of coursee, will kill to have handsome fairskinned kashmiris join the country.
Sadly Queer, the original # of stranded Biharis was only in thousands, now over half a million. They have no rights in Bangladesh.
I wonder why we don’t see any protests on Pakistani streets about them? We march for little flushing incidents, for Palestinians, for Iraqis, even when some friggin Arbi monkey suffers from constipation, we have marches in Pakistan. But not for Biharis, not to Darfuris.
the man who actually brought some back from BD was shot dead by his opponents - Ex CM of Punjab Gulam haider Wayn. He started this project and built houses for those who came to Pakistan from Bangladesh. but govt changed, changed policies...
we should drive out afghans to safe Afghanistan - they can survive well under US aid and support these days.
and make some room for these people.
[quote]
we should drive out afghans to safe Afghanistan - they can survive well under US aid and support these days.
and make some room for these people.
[/quote]
Those Afghans who wanted to go back have gone back a long time ago, the rest have assimilated seamlessly into western Pakistani society, they've intermarried, bought land, started their own businesses, they're now our people, I don't think anyone in Pakistan has the guts to send them back out, maybe from Isb, Lahore and maybe Khi, but they view the western provinces as their land as it was prior to the british durrand line, so yeh khwab dekhna chorr do.