JEDDAH, 24 April 2008 — The Pakistan Repatriation Council (PRC) has urged President Pervez Musharraf and the new government led by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to resolve the issue of stranded Pakistanis living in squalid camps in Bangladesh for over three decades.
Speakers at the meeting, held to mark the death anniversary of poet Allama Iqbal, also called on the government to instruct its mission in Dhaka to look after the stranded people and provide them all support and help until their repatriation to Pakistan. They also asked charitable organizations to extend help to the stranded Pakistanis. The meeting called on the OIC to include the issue in its agenda.
The meeting, presided over by visiting Pakistani poet, Sarshar Siddiqui, paid glowing tribute to Iqbal and called upon Islamabad to set up a research university for conducting research on Iqbal.
Visiting Pakistani poets Khurshid Rizvi, Shahzad Ahmed, Enayat Ali Khan and Ejaz Rahmani and local poets Habib Siddiqui, Athar Nafees Abbasi, Naseem Sehar, Abdul Qayyum Waseq, Syed Mohsin Alavi, Gule Anwar, Azhar Ilyas Chushti, Syed Mahtab Ahmed and Aftab Turabi recited poems to pay tribute to Iqbal.
Sarshar Siddiqui said the issue of stranded Pakistanis did not get the priority it deserved. “It would have been resolved long back had it been considered a national issue,” he said. He hoped and prayed that the new government would take up the issue sincerely.
Salahuddin Haider, adviser to the former chief minister of Sindh, who was the chief guest, said Iqbal’s vision of a separate homeland for Muslims did inspire Mohammad Ali Jinnah to work for a separate country for the Muslims of the subcontinent. Referring to stranded Pakistanis, he said, Pakistani rulers were responsible for the delay in the resolution of the issue. He also blamed the leaders of the Stranded Pakistanis General Repatriation Committee — the representative organization of the stranded Pakistanis based in Dhaka — for the delay in repatriation saying they failed to take into confidence all the parties to the dispute. He hoped the new government would take steps to resolve the issue.
Haider said the post-election euphoria is gradually fizzling out because politicians are involved in trading accusations rather than taking serious steps to resolve people’s problems.
Urdu Markaz President Athar Nafees Abbasi and Vice President Irfan Hashmi spoke about Iqbal’s role in the creation of Pakistan.
Maqboolur Rahman Abbasi of the Pakistan Journalists Forum paid tribute to Allama Iqbal and also appealed to the government to solve the issue of stranded Pakistanis on priority. Jamil Rathore read the message of Muslim World League Deputy General Secretary Sheikh Mohammad Nasir Al-Aboudi.
Hamid Islam Khan, senior vice president of PRC, referring to the statement of Pakistani High commissioner to Dhaka that the issue of stranded Pakistanis does not concern Pakistan, said the envoy should know that Rabita Trust was formed by Pakistan government in 1988 for the repatriation of those people and some of them were repatriated by Nawaz Sharif government during 1993.
Convener Ehsanul Haque said the issue got overwhelming support from poets, writers and journalists, but ignored by rulers and politicians. The meeting, conducted by PRC General Secretary Nasim Sehar, prayed for M.D. Tahir and mother of Ejaz Tahir Awan who died in Pakistan this week.
