Mission & Justice

Tariq Al-Maeena; 18/10/08

In our prayers for the poor and oppressed of this world, including those in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan, we can be somewhat forgiven for ignoring the plight of more than a quarter million ghetto dwellers in squalid camps in Bangladesh. These are the Biharis, forgotten remnants of the 1971 Indo-Pak war leading to the birth of Bangladesh, and there are very few voices that bring their miserable conditions to the fore. While the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states every person has a right to nationality, these “stranded Pakistanis” enjoy no such luxury. For the past 37 years, they have been languishing in 66 squalid camps spread across Bangladesh, each no bigger than a football field, with poor sanitation and shortage of running water.

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2/10/08

Authorities in Singapore have raided the premises of an engineering company following an Al Jazeera report on allegations that migrant workers were being kept there under duress. Singapore’s manpower ministry said it raided the offices of San’s Marine on Friday and have since launched an investigation. Last month Al Jazeera correspondent Tony Birtley visited the company’s warehouses and found about 30 migrant workers being held there in what the workers called “the cage”. Our correspondent was investigating how workers from Bangladesh were being ripped off in highly-organised false job scams, paying exorbitant fees to agents in exchange for broken promises of high paying jobs.

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