Call for end to discrimination against Urdu-speaking people

Camp-based Urdu-speaking community leaders, researchers and rights activists on Sunday alleged that Urdu speakers were being discriminated against although they have become Bangladeshi citizens.

Only the Urdu-speaking people have become voters but the discrimination they earlier faced is continuing, the leaders of Urdu speakers said at a national convention in Dhaka, also attended by students of the community.

The convention, Social Inclusion of Urdu-speaking camp-based Bangladeshis, was held at the RC Majumdar Auditorium in Dhaka University. The Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit organised the convention.

The camp-based Urdu-speaking people have been recognised as Bangladeshis and enlisted as voters following a High Court verdict delivered in 2008. Before the verdict, they were identified as stranded Pakistanis.

The speakers also alleged that only the voting right meant nothing as no affirmative action had been taken to improve their condition.

The RMRRU executive director, CR Abrar, said that no access to health care and waste management and discrimination such as delay in getting passports or not being invited letters for job interviews were a common phenomenon for such people.

They expressed their demands at the convention that included elimination of such discriminations and access to education, health and sanitary facilities. They also urged quotas in educational institutions and jobs.

Justice Habibur Rahman put out a call for an organised movement which could push forward their rightful demands.

'We have seen the ersatz activists of the language movement the way we now see so-called secularism. So no demands will be fulfilled without movement,' he said.

Lawyer Shahdeen Malik said that it is quite unfortunate that in Bangladesh, democracy means practice of 'majority-ism.'

'Unless we start to respect the identity of others and ensure their rights, the country will become a failed state,' Shahdeen said.

Former adviser to the caretaker government Rasheda K Chowdhury, Urdu- speaking community leader Sadakat Khan and Asraful Haque of Saidpur, Shabnam Ara of the Urdu-Speaking Women Association, among others. spoke.

A session of recitation of Urdu poems and traditional qawwali followed the convention, which also featured an exhibition of handicrafts of the Urdu-speaking people.

Source : New Age