Refugees Magazine Issue 147 ("The Excluded: The strange hidden world of the stateless") - The Biharis of Bangladesh

Refugees Magazine, 10 September 2007

By Kitty McKinsey

Geneva Camp is by any standards – even those of miserably poor Bangladesh – a squalid slum. Though most of the houses have solid brick walls, they are tiny and less than a metre apart. Outside their crowded dwellings, women cook their families' dinner over open sewers, as toddlers play nearby on heaps of garbage.

However, the most humiliating blow is that simply by admitting they live in Geneva Camp, residents are shut off from the basic rights citizens expect – going to school and university, getting a driver's license or finding a decent job.

That is because the camp, set up by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as a temporary site in 1971 and named after the agency's Swiss headquarters, is home to 18,000 of Bangladesh's 300,000 de facto stateless Biharis – also known as 'stranded Pakistanis' or the 'Urdu-speaking minority.' Once they give ghetto-like Geneva Camp as their address, residents say, the authorities disavow them, despite the fact that a High Court ruling in 2003 appeared to clear the way for all Biharis in the country to be considered citizens.

Mohammad Hasan, the 28-year-old Secretary-General of the Association of Young Generation of Urdu-Speaking Community, a group lobbying for full rights, recalls the plight of a Geneva Camp resident who, against the odds, managed to get a master's degree.

"He applied to the forestry ministry, passed written and verbal exams and got an interview card from the government," Hasan recalls."But his background was investigated and the police verification determined he was living inside the camp, so he lost the job." There's only one way around the situation, Hasan adds: "Camp people can get a (Bangladeshi) passport or a driver's license as long as they give a fake address."

The Biharis' plight stems from the separation of Pakistan. They, or their ancestors, had come to what was then East Pakistan from 1947 onwards after the partition of India. Before, during and after the nine-month civil war in 1971 that saw East Pakistan become Bangladesh, Biharis were killed and had their property looted by angry mobs who regarded them as traitors who had sided with Pakistan – a situation inflamed by the active participation of some Biharis in various notoriously murderous militias. By 1972 there were more than one million displaced Biharis living in settlements all over Bangladesh awaiting "repatriation" to Pakistan, despite the fact that most had never lived there.

Many did in fact move to Pakistan: around 178,000 in all benefited from organized repatriations between 1973 and 1993 (when protests in Pakistan brought the process to a halt), while others managed to find their own way there. The majority are reasonably well integrated in Pakistan's biggest city, Karachi, albeit mostly in very impoverished neighbourhoods such as Orangi Town.

In the 116 settlements that remain in Bangladesh – like Geneva Camp – there are still some members of the older generation who long for "repatriation" (including members of families split between the two countries). However younger people, such as Hasan and his group, are increasingly fighting for their rights within Bangladesh.

Khalid Hussain, president of the same association, says "We believe we are not stateless. We consider ourselves Bangladeshis. The legal situation is very clear."

UNHCR agrees."Urdu-speaking Biharis are citizens of Bangladesh according to its constitution, nationality legislation and the 2003 High Court verdict, which was not challenged," says the UN refugee agency's Representative in Bangladesh, Pia Prytz Phiri. The agency is encouraging Bangladesh to declare that Urdu-speaking Biharis are citizens of the country, and to include eligible Biharis on the voter list so their rights are assured. Bangladesh's military-backed government has promised parliamentary elections before the end of 2008. UNHCR also continues to encourage Pakistan to receive those Biharis whose families are split between the two countries.

In Bangladesh, the young Urdu-speakers call their desired affirmation of full rights 'rehabilitation,' and Hasan defines it this way: "When a boy from the camp gets elected as an mp, when people get public service jobs, then we will be rehabilitated."

Inside Geneva Camp, amid all the poverty and misery, that still seems like a distant dream. An older man approaches two visitors from UNHCR walking down the street."We have been living in Geneva Camp for 36 years and things are going from bad to worse," he says. He has a simple request: "Please pray for us."

Source: Refugees Magazine Issue 147: "The Excluded: The strange hidden world of the stateless" (September 2007).

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