Feature: Like birds in a cage: sub-human conditions for Bihari camp dwellers in Bangladesh

A Mother of three at the tender age of 20, Asma Begum lives in an eight by eight foot, tin-roofed shanty in the northwest of Dhaka city.

The tiny room which is devoid of any light even in the middle of the day also houses nine other family members.

The little room has space for just one bed. There is no attached toilet which means that this family of 13 not only shares the small dark hole, but also have to share it with several hundred of the few thousand Urdu-speaking people who live in the Mohammadpur Geneva Camp.

The people who live in the such camps are basically the descendants of the Urdu-speaking people and they are mostly third- generation Urdu-speakers, better known as Biharis who are also adept at speaking the local vernacular and have grown up as Bangladeshis albeit without state recognition.

Their ancestors might have identified themselves as Pakistani and would have gone there if given the option, but people who live in the Bihari camps now are basically as much Bangladeshi as any other mainstream residents of the country and would love to receive state recognition and citizens' facilities, something that they have been demanding for a long time.

Because they do not have valid Bangladeshi identity documents, they cannot just buy a piece of land in the country, even if they have the money and are therefore forced to live in sub-human conditions in these camps.

The government says that the number of Biharis, or the descendants of the stranded Pakistanis in Bangladesh, is around 300,000. The 33 camps in Dhaka host around 100,000 of them. There are 70 such camps nationwide. "There is no privacy. I, my husband and children have to share the room with my brothers and sisters-in-law and even with my mother-in-law," said Asma. When she was talking to Xinhua, her husband and children were lying on a small bed. One of her sisters- in-law was preparing lunch in that very same room. "Things are worst at night and early in the morning," Asma continued."When everybody sleeps at night, there is not enough space to change position. If you sleep on your back, then you will have to get up that way. We do not have enough space to turn around. This is a common thing in the camps. We have been living like this since we were born." "Early in the morning, we have to stand in long queues to get our turn to use the common toilet," she added. M Shoukat Ali, general secretary of the Stranded Pakistanis General Repatriation Committee (SPGRC), told Xinhua, "There are only 270 toilets, most of them unusable, for 35,000 people. The situation gets worst in the morning when elderly people stand in the long queue and sometimes soil themselves." Shanu, a small trader who lives in the camp, said, "Although we have voter ID cards the only thing we can do with them is cast votes. We cannot get any other facilities with these cards. We are not entitled to have passports. We cannot get any formal jobs outside the camp. We are like birds in a cage. We do not have any liberty."

There is no privacy at all because they cannot afford more than one room for an entire family, he said. He added that there is only one school in the area where there are four shifts -- three dedicated for schools and one for Madrassa. "So, you can easily understand what the situation is like inside the camp. In Bangladesh, you will not get any school with four shifts. Probably not in the world," M Shoukat Ali, who is also a headmaster of the school, said. Endit