The Ansar Burney Trust works for the release, welfare and repatriation of Pakistani legal and illegal immigrants abroad. Over the past few years, we have brought home two hundred thousand persons from various countries around the world, especially the Middle Eastern countries.

The illegal immigrants included men who had given their life savings and taken loans to pay agents in promise of a better life and a better future. Some were poor and illiterate, while others were middle class and educated – but neither could find work at home and both had responsibilities of family.

In such situations, these men are taken advantage of by agents who promise them an escape from all their problems and a better future for them and their families. They are promised transportation, a place to stay and a decent job – but nothing can be further from the truth.

The vast majority of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan find themselves being dumped in the middle of nowhere, handed over to the police, forced into slave labor and some are even killed. Others face more complicated scenarios.

In 2003, fifteen Pakistani illegal immigrants were arrested from onboard a cargo ship in Gela, Italy – under the suspicion of terrorism. Their passports had the word “shadighar” on place of birth, the same word used by terrorists just before the September 11 attacks on the USA.

The men were detained for several months, receiving no help as their own government (of Pakistan) denied they were Pakistanis. With no help from the government, the families of the men contacted the Ansar Burney Trust; and after an investigation by us in Pakistan and Italy, it was discovered that the word “shadighar” was actually the name of their town in Pakistan and the men had absolutely no connection with any terrorist organisation.

We provided this information to the Italian government, after which all fifteen men were freed and in compensation for their hardship they were given an indefinite stay to remain in Italy.

However, this story had a good ending. It is not always so.

In early 2002, while the USA was coming to grips with the horror of the September 11 attacks and countries around the world were aligning themselves on the war against terror – an apparent terrorist attack on the US Embassy in Macedonia was spoilt by the country’s Interior Ministry and Police.

It was reported that 7 Pakistanis, heavily armed with automatic weapons and explosives, were killed in an encounter with the police when they tried to attack the US Embassy in Skopje, Macedonia.

As always, in its attempts to further itself from the problems of its own people, the government of Pakistan reported that the 7 men were not Pakistanis but were in fact Al-Qaeda terrorists from another nation.

The families of the six Pakistani men contacted the Ansar Burney Trust and we began our own investigation - which revealed that six of the men were indeed Pakistanis, while the seventh was an Indian. They were all illegal immigrants and neither one of them had absolutely any connection with terrorist organisations or outfits.

A team of Ansar Burney Trust headed to Macedonia, later followed with a trip by Ansar Burney, Advocate. These trips, along with further cooperation with the new Macedonian Government revealed that the men were all innocent – illegally gunned down and killed to gain better support from the United States.

The seven men had been arrested on the Macedonian border with Bulgaria and taken into custody. It was then decided by the Interior Minister of Macedonia and some senior police officials to stage an attack on the US Embassy.

The seven men were taken to a location near the Embassy and killed in cold blood. The Quranic verses given to them by their families for luck were displayed as Al-Qaeda instructions on their bodies. Automatic weapons and explosives were then planted on their already dead bodies.

Since this information became public - warrants for the arrests of the officials involved have been released, while the bodies of the innocent men were brought back to Pakistan by the Ansar Burney Trust. The huge debts their families took out to pay the agents for travel to Europe were repaid by the Trust and we are currently seeking compensation from the government of Macedonia on behalf of the families.

Such horrific tales of human smuggling are so common, yet the government of Pakistan has taken minimum steps to tackle it. Instead, it prefers to take a position of denying Pakistanis even their nationality if they are discovered to have illegally gone abroad.

But even those who travel legally can suffer.

In March of 2005, 60 Pakistanis arrived legally in Khartoum, Sudan in search of a better future and to work a job they were promised by an agency in an oil company. However, to their shock and dismay, they found themselves to have been sold into slavery at a labor camp in Bageer (near Khartoum).

Surrounded by armed guards and with no escape, the men spent 5 months in the private prison, working as slave labourers and feeding mostly on boiled rice and dirty water.

When they finally managed to contact the Pakistani Embassy in Sudan they were given full support – until it was revealed that the company that arranged their travel and sold them into slavery was actually owned by a senior minister in Pakistan. The men were abandoned and left to suffer even longer.

The Ansar Burney Trust was informed through volunteers and we launched a campaign for the return of these men; finally convincing the Sudanese government to step in and the return of twenty-one of the men was arranged.

In a press conference in the Ansar Burney Trust office in Karachi, the men gave the name of the minister whose company had sold them into slavery – yet no investigations have ever been launched by the government or any charges brought against the minister. While the remaining Pakistanis have disappeared in Sudan and our efforts to trace them are being hindered by the Government of Pakistan.

In another instance, 10 Pakistani Taekwando players were arrested in Riga, Latvia in 2003 on charges of terrorism. Once again, the government of Pakistan denied they were Pakistani and once again the families of these men contacted the Ansar Burney Trust for their release.

After an investigation, it was revealed that the men were indeed Taekwando players who had gone to Latvia (legally) for a competition and had booked a flight back to Pakistan via Russia. However, there was a team of Israeli Basketball players travelling on the same flight, so without any evidence and purely on the bases that the men were Pakistani and Muslim, they were arrested on charges of terrorism – released after Ansar Burney Trust appeals to the Latvian Government.

Countless such cases exist, yet no government assistance or help is ever offered. It is for this reason that Ansar Burney Trust dedicates a large amount of its time and resources to help relieve the problems of migrants travelling abroad and of their families.

More case details, information and pictures will ba added soon