May 14, 2003	Wednesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 11, 1424

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QUETTA, May 13: Iraqi refugees living here for the last 10 years on Tuesday asked the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the United Sates and the government to make arrangements for sending them back to Iraq.

“We want to go back to our country as soon as possible as we are fed up with our miserable life here,” Basim Karim Majeed, 41, who lost his eyesight last month, told newsmen at the Quetta Press Club with a group of refugees, including a Kurdish woman and two children.

He said six Iraqi families comprising 41 people were living on the suburbs of the provincial capital for the 10 years in rented Kutcha houses. “We left our motherland due to the terror of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein 10 years ago and since then we are in Quetta,” Mr Majeed said and added that the UNHCR did nothing for them despite their requests and protest demonstrations and refused to accept them as refugees.

“Only three Iraqi families were given the status of refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as a result of our long struggle,” he said and added: “The attitude of human rights organizations is also not good with us.”