Stranded Pakistanis want to vote

From Anis Alamgir
DHAKA-When Bangladesh is gripped by the post-mayoral elections, several thousand Urdu speaking residents called “stranded Pakistanis” have been glued to events in Pakistan, which they consider their homeland.
The stranded Pakistanis ignored the elections in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka and have been debating how they would possibly be able to join this month’s referendum in Pakistan to determine President General Parvez Musharraf’s tenure in office.
However, the Pakistani High Commission has said that these stranded Pakistanis cannot vote, because they do not have the requisite documents.
This is the first time the Pakistani Government has taken all preparation to open a polling center in Dhaka on the occasion of referendum for Pakistani nationals living in Bangladesh for business, employment and other reasons. With the permission from local government ministry of Bangladesh headed Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party secretary general, the mission also requested all Pakistani nationals to cast their vote from 9 am to 7 pm on that day at its premises if they had valid passport or ID card.
Pakistani refugees, who are originally from India’s Bihar state and migrated to the then East Pakistan after the partition of the Indian sub-continent in 1947, are also demanding voting rights.
They have refused Bangladeshi citizenship since the birth of the new nation in 1971 and want to go back to Pakistan. They said as they were Pakistani and submitted their documents to Pakistan High Commission in Dhaka, they have every right to cast their vote in the coming referendum.
“If I get the chance of course I will cast my vote. Although we are living in Dhaka, but what’s the problem with it? We are demanding our voting right as Pakistanis as the Pakistan government is arranging voting here”, said Abdul Latif Khan,70, told this correspondent.
At his Geneva camp house in capital Dhaka’s crowded Mohammadpur area, Vice President of the SPGRC, an organisation of Stranded Pakistanis for repatriation to Pakistan, Latif said, “I had come here from Punjab of India in 1947 when I was a 13-year-old boy. Now I can not move very well, but if I get the chance even the day before I die, I want to avail the opportunity to go my homeland — Pakistan.”
Another Pakistani refugee, Raja Mama,45,claimed:”We have submitted our photos and ID cards to the Pakistani High Commission in Dhaka. Why we will not be allowed to vote?” Raja added “I am a refugee like President Musharraf. I came here from Bihar and he went had gone from Delhi to west Pakistan. That is the only difference. If we would have gone to West Pakistan, someone from us might have become President of Pakistan today.”
Some 3,200 refugee families comprising 20,000 people now live in the Geneva camp in Dhaka city. They live in inhuman conditions in a 6/6-foot makeshift homes on an average with 8 to 12 people in each. The refugee are not Bangladeshi, although they are living here for decades and neither Pakistani. The Pakistani government has no time to see their problems. From their birth they have only one dream to return to their dreamland — Pakistan.
Like Geneva camp, about 20 camps exist in Dhaka. At least 66 more are based in Khulna, Saiyedpur and other parts of Bangladesh.
There are 234,440 Pakistani refugees are living in Bangladesh, according to a joint survey conducted by Saudi-based NGO, Rabita, Pakistan HC in Dhaka and Government of Bangladesh in 1992. They are getting per head three-kilograms wheat every three-month from the government.
A portrait of General Pervez Musharraf hangs along with that of General Ziaul Haque in the offices of the Stranded Pakistanis General repatriation Committee (SPGRC) in a small room at the Geneva camp. A fluttering Pakistani flag on the roof top of the office catches the eye of any visitor.
SPGRC President Mr. Abdul Zabbar Khan is little critical about Musharraf.
“When he came to power he promised that he would fight corruption and poverty, besides recovering the ill-gotten wealth of the politicians, but he has done nothing,” Zabbar Khan said, adding “he is completely mum on our repatriation issue.”
Zabbar said MQM and Muslim League (Nawaz Sharif) gave only lip-service to the issue. In this regard we have no complain against Benazir Bhutto as she did not hide her stand against our repatriation.
Zabbar Khan recalled comments made by Pakistani Minister Omar Asghar when he visited the Geneva camp. The minister said Pakistan government was doing wrong against stranded Pakistani. His father Asghar Khan also visited this camp and showed his sympathy to the stranded Pakistanis. But when we wrote a latter to Mr. Omar after he became a member of Musharraf’s cabinet, he did not reply.
Stranded Pakistanis regretted that they have never been invited by Pakistan HC, although they observe important national days of Pakistan, including 23 March at their camp.
However, when contracted an official of Pakistan HC said, “as they don’t have any legal documents, we cannot allow them to vote. On the other hand what documents they have submitted to us, that is only for repatriation purposes. They have nothing to do with the voting.”

published 29 April 2002, The Nation, Pakistan