| Editorial High Court verdict to protect human rights Ripan Kumar Biswas
THE Bangladesh High Court (HC) has ruled that children of Urdu-speaking refugees, awaiting repatriation to Pakistan, have the right to Bangladeshi citizenship. Through the verdict by a two-member panel of Justice M.A. Rashid and Justice M. Ashfaqul on Sunday, May 18, some 300,000 refugees now languishing in 70 crammed camps across Bangladesh will have the right to live as Bangladeshis.
After the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971, the majority of the Urdu-speakers in the country applied for repatriation to Pakistan through the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), but Pakistan stopped taking them. These people became forced migrants in Bangladesh, becoming stateless with no access to citizenship rights. Realising that the government of Pakistan was not going to repatriate them, Pakistanis in Bangladesh continued to repatriate themselves and their families by whatever means were available to them.
In addition, in March 1978, the government of Pakistan issued a presidential ordinance stripping all Pakistanis, left in Bangladesh after December 1971 of their nationality. This ordinance was illegal, and its sole purpose was to deprive a group of citizens of their basic right as citizens of Pakistan. There are around one hundred thousand Pakistanis who returned without the blessing of the government of Pakistan, but are not recognised as citizens and are denied all amenities of citizenship. This is the other group of stateless.
Since 1971, people from different parts of the society, organisations of Urdu-speaking people, and numerous non-governmental organisations that have worked with the camp residents for so many years, have been urging the authorities in Bangladesh to give all the camp dwelling Urdu-speaking people Bangladeshi citizenship.
Though the HC verdict was awarded in favour of those who were minors in 1971, or born after the independence of Bangladesh, according to the inter-ministerial meeting held on September 5, 2007, the older refugees may also get the chance to be citizens if they wish. The refugees are the remnants of about 500,000 Urdu-speaking Muslims who migrated to then East Pakistan from India in 1947.
"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood," article 1 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts. During the liberation war, the Pakistani army threw to the winds all the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which Pakistan itself is a signatory. The Declaration very solemnly declares the recognition of the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family, and is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world.
All the refugee camps suffer from severe overcrowding, food insecurity, lack of access to safe drinking water, and poor sanitation, and lack basic facilities of medical services. Due to their camp address and unidentified status, camp-residents often face discrimination in the job market while females face numerous problems including demands for dowry that led to early marriage, lack of privacy, sexual abuse, and abandonment.
Last February, the Nepal government issued exit permits to Bhutanese refugees who had opted for third country resettlement. The United States has offered to resettle at least 60,000 Bhutanese refugees and Canada has indicated it will accept up to 5,000, while Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Norway have also shown their willingness to take in refugees. Over 100,000 Bhutanese have been living in seven camps in eastern Nepal after allegedly being driven out by the Druk government in the 1980s, when Bhutan began an assimilation drive, overriding the culture, language and dress of ethnic communities, mostly of Nepali origin. The first batch of refugees was set to fly to the United States in March, while larger numbers will be leaving Nepal starting in July.
The verdict of the HC of Bangladesh is bringing international attention, as the refugees now have a country, and it resolves their identity crisis. The people of Bangladesh want more reasonable and immediate steps to solve the crisis in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) and of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.
According to the chief adviser, in conformity with the Accord, some government steps have already been taken and the process is on to solve the problems in CHT. The CHT Accord of 1997 was signed in full accordance with the country's sovereignty and integrity and for upholding the political, social, cultural, educational and economic rights of the peoples living in the hilly region.
On the other hand, the Rohingya refugee problem in Bangladesh is a decades-long pending issue. There are still untold thousands of Rohingyas who are living in Bangladesh as undocumented refugees without any status and there are perhaps thousands of Rohingyas who are living in different countries of the world with Bangladeshi passport. Over 250,000 Rohingya Muslims from western Burma were forced into Bangladesh by the Burmese military in 1992 in a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Arakan State. Since then thousands of people have been detained in crowded refugee camps in Bangladesh and tens of thousands have been repatriated to Burma only to face repression again. On humanitarian ground, it needs immediate bi-lateral solution.
People appreciate the HC verdict, which will help the Urdu-speaking people to join with the mainstream society and expect more reasonable solution on other issues, as no human being can be truly happy until everyone can get a fair chance to participate in society.
Ripan Kumar Biswas is a freelance writer based in New York. | |
