KARACHI, Nov 30: Around 75 per cent of over three million people of Bengali-origin Pakistanis do not have Computerised National Identity Cards and are living like aliens and illegal migrants in their own country, the Pakistani Bengalis Action Committee chief patron has said.

Addressing a press conference at the Karachi Press Club here on Wednesday, action committee chief patron and former Orangi town nazim Shaikh Muhammad Feroze said that Bengali-origin Pakistanis were patriotic citizens and ready to sacrifice their life for the nation and country.

“However, unfortunately police and other agencies are hounding them and labelling them as aliens and illegal migrants,” he said.

He said that more than three million Bengali-origin people living in Pakistan, mostly in Karachi, had never accepted Bangladesh as their country and they were completely loyal to Pakistan.

He said that now the third generation of these patriotic people was living in the country, but they were not being accepted as the “sons of soil”.

He said the National Database Registration Authority, the National Alien Registration Authority and the Federal Investigation Agency were harassing Bengali-origin Pakistanis on one pretext or other.

They were not being issued CINCs, B-forms, passports and other legal documents, he said. Their votes were also not being added to voters' lists, he said, adding that these people were not only living in Karachi, but also in Badin, Golarchi, Lahore and Rawalpindi.

He said there were more than 200 localities of Bengali-origin Pakistanis in the country and some of them were located in Orangi, Korangi and Machhar Colony areas of Karachi.

“We were born here, we will die and will be buried here and nobody has the right to call us non-Pakistani because we are Pakistanis to the core of our heart,” Mr Feroze said and warned to stop the harassment and witch-hunt of Bengali-origin Pakistanis, or else they would take to the streets to fight for their rights.

He announced that a big rally from the mausoleum of the Quaid-i-Azam to Tibet Centre on M.A. Jinnah Road would be taken out on Dec 18.—PPI