Four lakh Pakistanis who are surrounded in Bangladesh

There is a problem with the date. It tells a different story in the textbooks and something else in reality. They have been reading since childhood that Malik Khudadad had two arms. In 1971, India stabbed in the back. The Pakistani arm was secretly twisted and separated, thus Bangladesh came into being.

After that, the story ends, money is digested and money is lost. Because it takes courage to tell the story of defeat in war and heart to understand the details after defeat.

Bangladesh vs Pakistan after 50 years

India’s role in breaking the eastern arm of Pakistan is not hidden from anyone and Narendra Modi’s participation as a special guest in the Golden Jubilee celebrations today is an acknowledgment that the independence of Bangladesh would not have been possible without Indian intervention.

This visit of Modi seems like a bitter sip to us Pakistanis, but now it is comforting to accept the fact that those ‘hungry naked Bengal’ where every year floods wreaked havoc and had nothing to eat. Good wear is far ahead of Pakistan in all respects today. Floods also occur and cotton still does not grow. But Bangladesh’s disaster management is excellent and Pakistani cotton is easily available in Bangladesh. Big and famous Pakistani brands have shifted their textile factories to Bangladesh, fed up with electricity and gas problems. Thus, in a country where cotton is not produced, the textile industry is developing double day and quadruple at night and is the backbone of the country’s economic development.

After 50 years of independence, Bangladesh proudly presents a comparison between the two countries. Not only the exports of Bangladesh but also the price of taka is almost double the Pakistani rupee. Bangladesh is far ahead of Pakistan in every field of education, health and economy. But thankfully there is one field in which Bangladesh could not beat us and that is the field of population. The Eastern wing, on the basis of its majority, had lashed out at the establishment, and today they have fallen behind us in this. In 1971, the population of the eastern wing was 70 million and that of the western wing was 60 million. Today, after half a century, the population of Bangladesh is 16.4 crores and the population of Pakistan is 22 crores. In other words, our ‘Platoon’ finally avenged the defeat of ‘Platoon Maidan’.

Besieged Pakistan, whom we have forgotten

The bloody riots that started over the language issue in 1952 culminated in Operation Searchlight on 25 March 1971. That same night, Sheikh Mujeeb was arrested and taken to Rawalpindi Jail. The next morning on March 26, Awami League declared independence from Pakistan. The Pakistani army tried hard to crush this rebellion, but with the support of India, the liberation mission was completed on 16 December 1971.

Bangladesh celebrates its independence anniversary on 26 March every year. Golden Jubilee celebrations are going on there today. There are those Pakistanis who have helped and supported the Pakistani army during the war, forced to live the worst life in different Geneva camps of Bangladesh. The reward for this support was that after half a century even today, hateful Gurdanas are visited in Bangladesh and the new generation in Pakistan does not even know their names. There are 117 campuses in various cities of Bangladesh including Dhaka including Rangpur, Chittagong, Saidpur, Khulna and Mymenganj including Rajshahi, where more than 400,000 refugees are living.

20 to 25 people live in seven-by-eight-foot huts that have no roof or strong walls. A cover is made of torn cloths. It has holes in places, which are avoided by oven in summer and cold winds in winter killing hundreds of people. Not only this, only five washrooms are available in the campus for three and a half hundred people. That is, there is only one washroom for about seventy people, and during the rains, the filth of the toilet spreads in the paths of the camps.

Supporting Pakistan is their crime

In 1947, Muslims from different parts of India migrated to Pakistan. Many people from UP Bihar and other parts instead of coming to Sindh Punjab settled in East Pakistan and became part of the Nizam. The mother tongue of these people was Urdu instead of Bengali. After 25 years, when the situation worsened, his support was with Pakistan. He loved Pakistan and supported Pakistan Army. The crime of chanting Pakistan Zindabad was so great that after the war those who owned their own properties were denied citizenship and their properties were confiscated. They were transferred to UN refugee camps. According to these families, in the bloody conditions of 1971, they not only lost their homes but were also killed by a large number of Bengalis.

Have the besieged received Bangladeshi citizenship?

Leaving aside common people, there is a misconception among many people associated with politics and journalism in Pakistan that since the Bangladeshi Supreme Court granted citizenship to the besieged in 2008, this problem is no longer a problem for Pakistan.

In 2008, the Supreme Court of Bangladesh allowed Biharis born in camps after 1971 to be included in the voter list.

According to this decision, they were given the right to get identity cards. This citizenship does not apply to those seniors who have lived on this land for 70, 75 years but were born before the formation of Bangladesh. A wave of joy swept through the young Biharis born in the camps, they finally got the citizenship of a country. But soon they realized that this was not citizenship but a fraud.

Citizenship and passports were granted only to Biharis, the majority of whom fortunately lived outside the camps, as citizenship required permanent residence. The people living in the camps face so many difficulties in obtaining a permanent residence certificate that even today it is not possible for them to obtain citizenship.

People living in the camps received only identity cards on which they could vote, but not citizenship rights or passports. We tried a lot to find out how many ‘stranded Pakistanis’ got Bangladesh citizenship after 13 years of the court order, but despite all efforts we could not find authentic data. But it is clear that Pakistan no longer officially recognizes these people as Pakistanis. These are the unfortunates who are considered Pakistani by the Pakistani government and not human beings by the Bangladeshi government.

Pakistan is bound to bring back the besieged Bangladesh

Born in the former East Pakistan, Pakistani journalist and critic Ehtisham Ahmad Nizami currently resides in Chicago from where he also runs an NGO dealing with education and basic needs of besieged Bangladesh and often visits Dhaka.

Ehtesham Sahib says that the court ordered to give citizenship to people born after 71, but was it implemented? No, no. Citizenship has certainly been granted, but mostly to those Biharis who were living outside the camps from the beginning. Even today, the people living in the camps are living only on the ‘identity card’ through which they can vote but they do not have civil rights nor can they make a passport.

He said that Bangladesh still demands to take back these besieged Pakistanis in every diplomatic meeting. In January of this year, Pakistani High Commissioner Imran Ahmad Siddiqui, in a meeting with Bangladeshi government officials, once again demanded an apology from Pakistan for the events of 71 and demanded to take back those Pakistanis. If these people are their citizens, which country talks about deporting its citizens to another country?

According to Ehtisham Nizami, under the Tripartite Agreement (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh) signed in New Delhi in 1974, Pakistan was bound to resettle the Biharis in Pakistan within three years. After that, in the 80s, unanimous resolutions were repeatedly passed by the Senate and the National Assembly for the return of the besieged. A delegation of representative senators from the four provinces visited the camps of the besieged and came back and told the state of the besieged in the Senate and made heartfelt speeches. After which the Senate passed a unanimous resolution to ensure the return of the besieged as soon as possible and resettle them in Punjab.

Every year during the Junio ​​regime, money was allocated in the budget for the return of the besieged. In 1988, a formal fund for the return of the besieged was established in Kontakt Alam-e-Islami, in which Rs. In 1992, during Nawaz Sharif’s regime, Begum Khaleda Zia’s negotiations with Pakistan reiterated the commitment that all the people living in the camps would be brought back to Pakistan.

In this regard, in 1992, 350 Biharis were brought to Pakistan and settled at Mian Chanu in Punjab. But millions of Pakistanis are still suffering from human tragedy. It is a pity that Pakistan refuses to even recognize these people as Pakistanis.

How many people are living illegally in Pakistan?

Bringing the besieged Bangladesh back to the country is such a big problem that we have closed our eyes like a pigeon despite the international agreements?

On the one hand, four lakh true patriots, on the other hand, about five million illegal residents, of which 90 percent are Afghans. The number of refugees registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is 1.4 million. While, according to a conservative estimate, there are around 4 million Afghanis permanently present in Pakistan, who not only have businesses spread from Khyber to Karachi, but also have NADRA ID cards and passports through fake documents.

Afghan refugees should rightly be grateful to General Zia, who four decades ago asked the Pakistani Ansar to open the doors of their homes to millions of Afghans. Salute to the vision of General Zia who saw the glimmer of rich profit in settling millions of Afghans. Eyes started to dazzle with the shine of American dollars and melodious music started to ring in the ears from the bells, but at the same time, the work continued with mere promises and childish consolations to bring back and settle the 250,000 besieged Bangladeshis to Pakistan.

Beleaguered Bangladesh an out-of-fashion issue

This is the tragedy that has become ‘out of fashion’, which in journalistic parlance is also a ‘dead issue’. Be it political parties or religious parties claiming one umma, they stopped even mentioning the names of these oppressors. According to famous journalist Hamid Mir, nowadays he is renewing his faith by collecting funds in the name of Muslims of Myanmar, Kashmir and Palestine. Bihari Pakistanis should not be remembered because if they come to Pakistan, the funds collected in their name will also have to be spent on them, so no party is ready to put their hands in the ‘business’ of this waste.