From Bangladeshi Child Prisoner Of War In An Indian Concentration Camp To Houston Surgeon, Khawaja Azimuddin, On Valuing Refugee Communities

“The Boy Refugee: A Memoir from a Long-Forgotten War” is my story. It's a story of upheaval and turmoil faced by a young boy and his family caught up in the 1971 war between India and Pakistan which led to the eventual creation of Bangladesh. 

Born in Dacca, East Pakistan, I was the youngest of three children in a warm and loving family. My mother worked as a teacher and father was a manager in the Adamjee Jute Mills. We enjoyed a solid middle-class life until our world turned upside down and we found ourselves in the middle of a civil war.

My family miraculously survived the vicious war between India and Pakistan, only to become targets of ethnic killings. Having lost our home, country and everything we owned, we became refugees in our own homeland and were taken as civilian prisoners of war by the Indian Army.

We were packed in trains and sent 1,200 miles away to a refugee/prisoner-of-war camp in neighboring India. We spent the next two years in a caged internment camp, surrounded by barbed wire and guarded day and night by Indian soldiers. With dismal living conditions and scarce food, life in the camp was harsh and amenities were few. Yet somehow, my family not only survived this two-year ordeal but we managed to keep our spirits high. This memoir is a story of our day-to-day life, trials, hopes and fears. 

And finally, our release and return to our homeland.

My life today as a successful Colon & Rectal surgeon in Houston, Texas is a million miles away from those tumultuous years. Nearly fifty years later “The Boy Refugee: A Memoir from a Long-Forgotten War” was written in the hope of using my childhood experiences to bring attention to the plight of refugees throughout the world. 

There are over 70 million refugees who have been driven out of their homes often because of their race, ethnicity or religious beliefs. They are shunned by indigenous populations and the civilized nations of the world have closed their doors upon displaced people. My book shows that, given the right circumstances, these refugees can be productive members of society.

It’s imperative that we empathize with the suffering of those forced to leave their homes due to no fault of their own, often under threat of persecution. It's time for the civilized nations of the world to find a long-lasting solution to the refugee crisis. By supporting and nurturing these displaced people we are giving them a chance to become an asset to society.

It’s also time to quash the general misconception that refugees are a burden on the host communities. In the United States, refugees not only don’t abuse government funding, on average, they pay $21,000 more in taxes than they ever receive in public benefits.

In fact multiple studies have clearly shown the beneficial impact of refugees who so often bring their entrepreneurial skills and contribute to the local economy. Notable ones who have enormously contributed to their respective fields come to mind, such as Albert Einstein, George Soros and Madeleine Albright.

As we have seen, the world is still struggling with the refugee crisis and faces similar humanitarian disasters such as mass migration, displacement, and forced relocation. In recent years, millions of people have been displaced from war-torn countries like Syria, Sudan, Burma, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Since 2016 the U.S. Government implemented stricter immigration policies and banned the entry of refugees, including those from Muslim majority countries.  Historically, the United States has accepted around 100,000 refugees each year but this was radically reduced by the Trump administration from nearly 85,000 to fewer than 12,000 in fiscal year 2020. Historically this is the lowest number of refugees admitted to the US since the inception of this program.

President Joe Biden has pledged that he will raise the annual refugee admissions ceiling to 125,000.  This exalted position goes hand-in-hand with the responsibility to look after the rights of the weak and the oppressed. It is our moral obligation to stand by the most downtrodden at the time of their greatest need.

If my personal memoir can bring more awareness about the refugee crisis and can humanize refugees than I will have achieved what I set out to do.