DHAKA, Feb 23: The stranded Pakistanis, who were evicted from the Mirpur ADC relief camp on Saturday, submitted a memorandum to the High Commissioner of Pakistan in Dhaka on Sunday morning, seeking a quick diplomatic intervention to secure their rights.

A three-member delegation led by Abdul Jabbar Khan, president of the Stranded Pakistanis General Repatriation Committee (SPGRC), handed over the memorandum. Earlier, they staged a sit-in in front of the High Commission office in Gulshan area of the capital city. Several hundred of the eviction victims, and their fellow Pakistanis living in some other camps, took part in the sit-in.

The Saturday’s eviction drive rendered around 3,000 people homeless. Many of them were seen wondering helplessly around the just-demolished camp in Mirpur in the afternoon. The government authorities concerned have already given possession of some plots from the “recovered camp” to the Bangladeshis who were allotted the land earlier.

The eviction was done by the authorities of Dhaka City Corporation and Housing and Public Works Ministry, claiming that the Pakistanis were illegally possessing the area. But the SPGRC memorandum said that the authorities concerned “bulldozed the camps of the stranded Pakistanis in defiance of a High Court order asking the government not to disturb/evict/or demolish camps of stranded Pakistanis “till their fate is determined”.

Complaining that ‘a heavy contingent of police’ also tortured the poor stranded Pakistanis while ‘illegally and unjustifiably’ evicting them, the leaders of the group communicated to the High Commissioner of Pakistan that the stranded Pakistanis living in other areas of the Dhaka city, including the Geneva camp at Mohammadpur, were now ‘suffering from a sense of insecurity’ and apprehending further evictions.

“Under the circumstance,” the SPGRC leaders sought the High Commissioner’s ‘personal intervention’ in terms of ‘taking up the matter on priority (basis) with authorities of Bangladesh’.

The High Commissioner, Iqbal Ahmed, is learnt to have assured the SPGRC leaders of taking up the issue with the government of Bangladesh. Following the assurance, the SPRGC ‘dropped’ its plan to submit a memorandum to Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia today, said the SPGRC president this afternoon. Besides, Khaleda Zia left Dhaka for Malaysia this morning to attend the NAM moot in Kuala Lumpur.

The executive engineer of the Housing and Public Works department, who supervised the eviction of the Mirpur camp on Saturday, said that they had no plan to conduct eviction in any other camp of the stranded Pakistanis. “What we have done in Mirpur have done legally”, the official said. “We have already given possessions of the recovered land to those who were lawfully allotted it earlier.”