Stateless in Pakistan

Cit­i­zen­ship to the coun­try is a fun­da­men­tal right of the res­i­dents who call the coun­try their home. Hence, denial of cit­i­zen­ship right is an extreme fail­ure of the state. Apart from denial of cit­i­zen­ship to cer­tain peo­ple cur­rent­ly liv­ing in Pak­istan, in oth­er cas­es, those liv­ing out­side the ter­ri­to­ry of Pak­istan and want to be repa­tri­at­ed are abstained from the cit­i­zen­ship rights. This caus­es a predica­ment in both inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and at home, as those who asso­ciate with Pak­istan are denied the rights that they deserve. There needs to be more aware­ness in Pak­istan about those who are denied cit­i­zen­ship, espe­cial­ly ‘strand­ed’ refugees. Pres­sure should be exert­ed through lob­by­ing to give these refugees a legal sta­tus in Pak­istan so that they do not remain strand­ed in terms of access­ing health care and edu­ca­tion, or to give them ID cards and pass­ports so they do not remain immo­bile with­in the coun­try they ascribe to.

A prime exam­ple is that of strand­ed Biharis in Bangladesh. It is impor­tant to know that dur­ing 1971, these Biharis aid­ed the West­ern Pak­istani Army to retain East Pak­istan. How­ev­er, with Indi­an Army’s inter­ven­tion, West Pak­istan was defeat­ed and East Pak­istan won inde­pen­dence and declared Bangladesh. How­ev­er, this left an ordeal for the Biharis who sup­port­ed West Pak­istan. The Biharis were con­fined by the Bangladesh state and they were deprived of the cit­i­zen­ship rights and kept in refugee camps from where they were to be sent back to Pak­istan. How­ev­er this nev­er occurred. Out of an approx­i­mat­ed 300,000 Biharis, only one third of them were repa­tri­at­ed back to Pak­istan, the rest of them still lan­guish­ing in the camps of Bangladesh, deprived of their basic rights. Those repa­tri­at­ed to Pak­istan are fac­ing no less ordeal. Accord­ing to the Pak­istan Cit­i­zen­ship Act,

“any per­son who, at any time before the six­teenth day of Decem­ber 1971, was a cit­i­zen of Pak­istan domi­ciled in the ter­ri­to­ries which before the said day con­sti­tut­ed the province of East Pak­istan and who being under the pro­tec­tion of Pak­istan pass­port, was on that day, or is, resid­ing in any coun­try beyond those ter­ri­to­ries shall not be deemed to be a cit­i­zen of Pak­istan unless, upon an appli­ca­tion made by him to the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment in this behalf the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment has grant­ed him a cer­tifi­cate that at the date of the cer­tifi­cate he is a cit­i­zen of Pak­istan.”

This means that the repa­tri­at­ed Biharis are still denied their cit­i­zen­ship rights, despite their alle­giance with West Pak­istan at the time of war. This grue­some injus­tice stands in con­tra­dic­tion with The Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights, the Inter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion on the Elim­i­na­tion of All Forms of Racial Dis­crim­i­na­tion and The Inter­na­tion­al Covenant on Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Rights.

With now noth­ing to look for­ward to, these refugees call upon the recog­ni­tion of Pakistan’s past mis­takes and upon the government’s respon­si­bil­i­ty for these strand­ed Biharis in Bangladesh where they have been deprived of their rights for the last 43 years, and also in Pak­istan where they are still lan­guish­ing in refugee camps with­out basic facil­i­ties. It is high time that some heed is paid to their suf­fer­ing and to improve their sta­tus to that of any oth­er cit­i­zen of Pak­istan.

Cur­rent­ly, Pak­istan delib­er­ate­ly remains obliv­i­ous of the plight of Biharis who remain strand­ed in Pak­istan and Bangladesh, nor does it show any con­cern about their mis­ery. There are a few inter­na­tion­al agen­cies that are rais­ing aware­ness about the state­less­ness of these refugees, how­ev­er, very lit­tle is being done here in Pak­istan by the civ­il soci­ety. There needs to be far-reach­ing aware­ness about their plight to make the gov­ern­ment pay heed to this mon­strous neglect.

Not much is known to the pub­lic about the mat­ter. A prop­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion por­tal needs to be set up to give these refugees a chance to be heard, as well as civic edu­ca­tion to make peo­ple aware of how the denial of cit­i­zen­ship deprives peo­ple of their rights and what respon­si­bil­i­ty the state is neglect­ing. There are many ways to raise this issue with the help of civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions that can lob­by for issue and bring it for­ward to the gov­ern­ment of Pak­istan to call for the cit­i­zen­ship rights that these refugees have been cry­ing for.

They are a small lan­guage minor­i­ty and are main­ly set up in the port of Karachi. The resis­tance to their accep­tance can be traced back to sev­er­al rea­sons. First, their refugee sta­tus can grant for aid for their camps. Sec­ond, it is the army that places a hin­drance to their assim­i­la­tion into the soci­ety. Third is the inward racial dis­crim­i­na­tion that many hold against Biharis. As a result, they face big­ger chal­lenges in their day to day efforts of get­ting meals and seek­ing edu­ca­tion. Chil­dren remain main­ly deprived of nor­mal child­hood as they have to face many hard­ships in sus­tain­ing them­selves. They retort to beg­gary and oth­er trans­gres­sion to help them­selves and their fam­i­lies instead of going to school like oth­er chil­dren. This stands in stark con­tra­dic­tion to the Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child.

These Biharis remain devoid of polit­i­cal recog­ni­tion and can­not vote. Their lack of polit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion means that their issues can hard­ly be redressed, they remain voice­less and pub­lic sen­ti­ment can­not be mold­ed in their favor. Nor are they able to seek prop­er legal ser­vices to fight for their cause as they are not tak­en seri­ous­ly.

Remain­ing with­out dig­ni­ty in their lives sets them in an ordeal no one can com­pre­hend. They should enjoy their right to live their lives with respect and as full cit­i­zens of Pak­istan. Not only that, the Pak­istani state should also pay heed to those remain­ing Biharis in Bangladesh, who call them­selves Pak­istani, to repa­tri­ate them back to their home­land to give them the dig­ni­ty of their lives that they spent with hard­ship and degra­da­tion.

There are many oth­er state­less peo­ple liv­ing in Pak­istan who deserve some recog­ni­tion and inte­gra­tion. For exam­ple, the Afghan nation­als who have tak­en refuge in Pak­istan and have been liv­ing here for gen­er­a­tions. It is time that they too are giv­en dig­ni­ty and pro­vid­ed with the same rights as any Pak­istani cit­i­zen.

This is an impor­tant issue as it also caters direct­ly to the eco­nom­ic per­for­mance of Pak­istan. With­hold­ing or sup­press­ing any seg­ment of the Pak­istani soci­ety can have detri­men­tal effects on the over­all well-being of Pak­istan. More­over, aware­ness about the cit­i­zen­ship rights plays a vital role to under­stand the polit­i­cal sce­nario of Pak­istan and the inter­nal mis­bal­ance the soci­ety holds, which is caus­ing inter­na­tion­al shame of how the state is mis­treat­ing its cit­i­zens and refugees. The issue of state­less­ness needs to be known wide­spread among the cit­i­zens of Pak­istan as an issue that cer­tain seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion face due to the state’s neglect.