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278<br />

Refugees<br />

Afghan refugee women wait to return to their homeland.<br />

also held the Afghans responsible for a spike in incidents of terrorism and<br />

demanded that the government comply with a Peshawar High Court (PHC)<br />

direction and send the Afghans back at the earliest.<br />

According to the UNHCR website, many of the Afghans returning from<br />

Pakistan during the year cited the high cost of living, especially food and fuel,<br />

increased competition for jobs and escalating security concerns in the Khyber<br />

Pakhtunkhwa province.<br />

According to media reports monitored by HRCP, as many as 803 Afghan<br />

nationals were taken into custody in 2012 under Foreigners Act for their<br />

presence in Pakistan without any valid travel or stay documents. Those who<br />

could not provide any legal document authorising their stay were deported<br />

after a brief prison term. It was not certain how many of the 803 Afghans<br />

arrested in 2012 were deported. Separately, the media also reported the<br />

deportation of at least 57 Afghans.<br />

No country for stranded Pakistanis<br />

The lingering human tragedy of hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis<br />

stranded in Bangladesh for over 40 years continued without any progress or<br />

attention in 2012. The de facto statelessness of this Urdu speaking community,<br />

also known as Biharis, did not evoke any suo motu notices, seminars, or<br />

promises from political parties and government officials in Pakistan. The Biharis<br />

have insisted that they were Pakistani nationals until Bangladesh emerged as a<br />

separate country in 1971 and should be repatriated. Pakistan has not agreed to<br />

their repatriation. In recent years, Bangladesh has granted voting rights to<br />

those Biharis who were minors in 1971 war or were born later. However, the<br />

Biharis who were adults in 1971 have not been given legal recognition.<br />

The over a quarter a million Biharis live in refugee-like conditions in 60

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