KARACHI, 2 January 2006 — Law enforcement agencies yesterday arrested 21 foreign students in madrasas for overstaying their visas and warned another 94 with valid visas to leave the country as soon as possible, sources of the Ittehad Tanzimat Madaris Deeniya (ITMD) said in Karachi.
They said the arrested students would soon be deported and no police case of overstaying was lodged against the students. The law enforcers and officials of the district administration visited 27 seminaries in the city and checked visas and other travel documents of foreign students.
Most of the arrested students are from Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria and Sri Lanka, sources said. The Interior Ministry directed intelligence agencies to compile a record of foreigners studying in the International Islamic University (IIU) and living in its hostels or in private accommodation, they said.
The ministry also sought information about foreign IIU students who had completed their studies but were still in Pakistan without valid visas or travel documents, they added. The ITMD urged the Supreme Court to stop the government from harassing and deporting foreign madrasa students.
The group vowed yesterday to resist a government plan to deport their foreign students, calling the proposal “immoral.”
The warning came just days after the government appeared to back away from its Dec. 31 deadline for foreign students at Pakistani Islamic schools — long considered breeding grounds for militants — to return to their home countries. About 200 clerics and their supporters from some 12,000 madrasas, met in Islamabad yesterday to oppose the foreign student expulsion plan.
“The convention expressed concern over the harassment of madrasas over (the issue of) foreign students and decided that no student will be returned,” the coalition said in a statement after the meeting.
“Every student has the right to get education in an atmosphere of freedom, especially when he has all complete legal documents,” it said. The clerics called the government’s proposed steps against foreign students “inhuman, immoral and totally illegal.”
In July, President Pervez Musharraf ordered all foreign Islamic students to leave the country by the end of the year or face expulsion, in response to reports that at least one of the suicide bombers who attacked the London transport system in July had visited a Pakistani madrasa.
