120 Statelessness and citizenship region would upset Cold War power balances, the Nixon Administration in the USA provided military supplies to Pakistan. A few months later, in December, Pakistan surrendered, and conflict with India formally ended under the July 1972 Simla Agreement. Copyright © 2011. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. All rights reserved. POST-INDEPENDENCE: DISPLACEMENT AND REPATRIATION The Liberation War, as it is known in Bangladesh, gave birth to an independent country,14 which swiftly established a parliamentary democracy. Amidst these developments, the situation of the Urdu-speaking minority took a dramatic turn for the worse. As the Pakistani military and civilians evacuated from Bangladesh, the Urdu-speaking minority found themselves unwanted by both countries. Pakistan was reportedly concerned that a mass influx of people would create tensions within culturally mixed populations, particularly in the Sindh region.15 Bangladesh, on the other hand, rejected the community for having supported the enemy. Revenge attacks continued. As Ninette Kelley explains, ‘Witnesses reported summary executions by firing squads, mass decapitations, rape and mutilation. Although the government estimated that 15,000 were killed, most estimates place the number of deaths of Urdu-speakers at between 70,000–100,000 people in a matter of months’.16 Hundreds of thousands of internally displaced members of the Urduspeaking minority sought refuge in some 166 camps quickly constructed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). These camps were situated mostly on public land in or near urban areas such as Dhaka, Rajshahi, Khulna and Chittagong divisions.17 Some of the camps in Dhaka were established in areas in which Urdu-speakers had long been settled, such as Mohammedpur and Mirpur. As the population crowded into the ICRC camps, many members of the group were purged from government posts and their property confiscated under presidential orders.18 Property was seized on grounds that it was deemed abandoned or that it belonged to enemy aliens.19 On 15 December 1972, a presidential order on citizenship, the Bangladesh Citizenship (Temporary Provisions) Order, 1972,20 was promulgated. In this same period, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh sought to address the status of displaced persons. Under the New Delhi Agreement of August 1973, Pakistan and India, with the concurrence of Bangladesh (which Pakistan had not yet recognized), set out to solve ‘the humanitarian problems resulting from the conflict of 1971’.21 Pressure on the Pakistan government mounted from the Urdu-speaking population in the Sindh Statelessness Citizenship120 : A Comparative Study on the Benefits of Nationality, edited by Brad K. Blitz, and Maureen Lynch, M2482 - BLITZand PRINT.indd 21/12/2010 11:56 Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bham/detail.action?docID=655534. Created from bham on 2023-11-30 09:57:20.