for repatriation. 4 An estimated 80,000-100,000 Urdu speakers also spontanously moved to Pakistan. 5 Many of those who have not been “repatriated” continue to live in Government-established camps and settlements in Bangladesh, while a growing number have integrated into Bengali communities throughout the country. 2. According to recent estimates, the Urdu-speaking community in Bangladesh numbers some 250,000 persons, with over 151,000 residing in 116 open camps and settlements. 6 Exact figures are not available given that no census of the Urdu-speaking population in the country, especially those persons living outside the camps and settlements, has been carried out. 3. From 1971 until 2008, Urdu speakers, many of whom had sided with Pakistan in the Liberation War and had registered to be “repatriated” to Pakistan after 1971, were not recognized as falling under the terms of Bangladeshi citizenship legislation and were thus stateless. In 2008, however, the Supreme Court of Bangladesh held that they had always qualified as Bangladeshi nationals under domestic legislation. Registration of Urdu speakers 4. In 2003, in the landmark Abid Khan decision, 7 the Supreme Court of Bangladesh (High Court Division) held that the ten Urdu-speaking petitioners, born both before and after 1971, were Bangladeshi nationals pursuant to the Citizenship Act of 1951 8 and the Bangladesh Citizenship (Temporary Provisions) Order of 1972, 9 and thereby directed the Government to register them as voters. The Supreme Court further stated that residents of the camps and settlements had not “attained any special status so as to be excluded from the operation of the laws of the land”, and hence “mere residence” in the camps could not be deemed as allegiance to another State. In determining whether registration for “repatriation” to Pakistan would affect a petitioner’s right to Bangladeshi citizenship, the Court stated, quoting from an earlier case: “The mere fact that he filed an application for going over to Pakistan cannot take away his citizenship. The Bangladesh Citizenship Order. P.O. 4 5 6 7 8 9 Sumit Sen, ‘Stateless Refugees and the Right to Return: The Bihari Refugees of South Asia – Part 2’, (2000) 12 International Journal of Refugee Law 41, 41-70, available at http://ijrl.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/12/1/41. See also United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, World Refugee Survey 2005 – Bangladesh, 20 June 2005, available at http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/42c9288c16.html. Loraine Mirza, Internment Camps of Bangladesh (Crescent International, Ontario 1998) 66. Estimates are based on a May 2006 unpublished study undertaken by Al-Falah Bangladesh, an NGO of the Urdu-speaking community. Copy available with UNHCR. Abid Khan and others v. Govt. of Bangladesh and others, (2003) 55 DLR (HCD) 318, available at http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4a54bbcf0.html. Pakistan Citizenship Act, Act II of 1951, 13 April 1951, available at http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3ae6b52a8.html. The Act is still applicable in Bangladesh by virtue of the Adaptation of Existing Bangladesh Laws Order 1972. See Paulsen, above footnote 1, 5468. Bangladesh Citizenship (Temporary Provisions) Order, No. 149 of 1972, 26 March 1971, available at http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3ae6b51f10.html. 2