DR. ALI AL-GHAMDI Last week's article focused mainly on the issue of Al-Quds (Jerusalem) because this is the most important issue facing the Islamic world. Moreover, this is the core issue of the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC) for which it was founded. Jerusalem is the permanent headquarters of the OIC. That article also dealt with the ongoing Judaization of Jerusalem and Israel's attempts to change its demographic and geographical structure. As far as Jerusalem is concerned, Israel is pursuing an aggressive and arrogant policy about which no one can keep silent. The Jewish government has so far built thousands of settlements for Jewish settlers who flock to the holy city from all parts of the world. Israel also drives Palestinians out of their homes and then demolishes their houses and bulldozes their property. All of these measures, which have made the lives of Palestinians miserable, are being pursued in defiance of the decisions of the international community and of international resolutions, conventions and agreements pertaining to the Palestinian issue. Last week's article also deals with the issue of the Rohingya Muslims who are facing ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. According to a UN report, the Rohingya have been subjected to more persecution than any other minority group in any part of the world. They are struggling to survive as Buddhist extremist groups target their villages by burning their homes and killing them while the police are nowhere to be seen to save them or to stop the aggression against them. If the Rohingya attempt to defend themselves, the police rush to arrest and torture them, accusing them of creating problems and spreading chaos. The Myanmar government has deprived the Rohingya of their right to citizenship as well as to all internationally accepted human rights simply in order to satisfy Buddhist extremists. It is clearly not possible to deal with all the pressing issues facing the Muslim Ummah in a single article. Some readers criticized confining the previous article to the issues of Jerusalem and the Muslims of Burma, and not dealing with other pressing issues. They demanded that the OIC, in its capacity as the umbrella body of Muslim countries, address other major problems Muslims are faced with and alleviate their suffering. I have received phone calls as well as e-mail messages, in addition to comments posted on the website of the Saudi Gazette, pertaining to such issues, which include Kashmir and the stranded Pakistanis (Biharis) in Bangladesh. Kashmir has been a burning issue for Muslims for more than six decades and it still remains unresolved. For more than 40 years, Biharis have been living in miserable and pathetic conditions in Bangladesh. It is unfortunate that the onus for the fate of these people lies on two member states of the OIC –Pakistan and Bangladesh. Their problems date back to the time of the subcontinent's partition between India and Pakistan on the basis of a two-nation theory. According to the partition plan, those regions where Muslims were a majority would join Pakistan and those regions where Hindus were a majority would remain part of India. As for minorities on both sides, they had the option of either joining the country where they had a majority or continuing to remain where they were a minority. As far as the Indian state of Bihar was concerned, Hindus were the majority in the state, and most of the Muslims who were a minority decided to migrate to Pakistan. They migrated to East Pakistan because it was very close to their state. However, when East Pakistan seceded from West Pakistan, these Biharis became victims of the secession. The Biharis stood for a United Pakistan and hence they lined up with the Pakistan army during the nine-month civil war, which ended with the intervention of the Indian army in support of the secessionists. The Biharis were victims of the secession of East Pakistan. Militias loyal to the Awami League party perpetrated crimes against them. They were subjected to killing, looting and displacement. They were driven out of their homes and their property was stolen in retaliation for their position against secession. That eventually led them to a number of refugee camps pending their repatriation to Pakistan, which is the country that they had chosen to live in from the beginning in terms of its name, as well as its language and culture. The Biharis were not willing to remain in the new state of Bangladesh as the local Bengali people were not ready to accept them. Confronted with threats to their life, they huddled in squalid and overcrowded tents, beset by poverty, ignorance, illiteracy and disease. They are waiting for their repatriation to Pakistan to live with their fellow Pakistanis. The successive governments in Pakistan repeated their promise to repatriate the Biharis but this did not happen for a variety of reasons. The Makkah-based Muslim World League, when Dr. Abdullah Omar Naseef was its secretary general, set up a charity endowment fund in cooperation with the Pakistan government to undertake the repatriation and resettling of Biharis in Pakistan. This was during the period of president Zia ul Haq. The Punjab provincial government donated land for the construction of houses for Biharis. But the project was halted following the military coup led by General Pervez Musharraf. Now that Nawaz Sharif has returned to power as prime minister of Pakistan, there are renewed hopes of finding a solution to the problem of a quarter of a million Pakistanis who have been leading an extremely miserable life in Bangladesh for over four decades. I hope that the OIC will put this issue on its agenda and work to find a solution to this problem by exercising its influence on these two member states. Pakistan and Bangladesh have joint responsibility to address this pressing problem. Officials from both states must recognize the fact that without the sacrifices of these people and other like-minded people, Pakistan would not have been created, and had Pakistan not been formed, there would have been no Bangladesh. As far as the issue of Kashmir is concerned, everyone knows that it is on the agenda of the OIC, and the pan-Islamic body has a lot of interest in resolving it. The resolution of this problem lies in the implementation of UN resolutions that call for giving the people of Kashmir their right to self-determination. — Dr. Ali Al-Ghamdi is a former Saudi diplomat who specializes in Southeast Asian affairs. He can be reached at [email protected]
