Afghan migrants deported from Pakistan, Iran criticises mistreatment

Criticising the mistreatment by the authorities in Pakistan and Iran, the Afghan migrants who have been forcibly deported from the nations have called for international attention to their plight there, according to TOLOnews.

The returnees, who have come from Iran, said that they were beaten by the Iranian government forces there. Whereas, those in Pakistan expressed concern about the increasing challenges they face in that nation.

Basir, an Afghan returnee, who spent nearly two years in Iran and was recently deported with his three children, said: “When they wanted to search us, I resisted and they beat me. Now, I don’t know if my ribs are broken or what has happened to me, I can’t even lift two kilograms,” reported TOLOnews.

Whereas, Salahuddin, another deportee from Iran, said: “We went to Iran out of necessity to provide for our children, and they made it very hard for us.”

On the other hand, lamenting about the situation, Reza Sazesh, an Afghan migrant in Pakistan, said: “Even those who had cards were deported from Quetta and Islamabad, Pakistan, and we are worried about this process.”

However, the Taliban’s consul in Karachi, Pakistan, urged the country’s authorities to provide Afghan migrants with additional time to return.

According to the Taliban’s Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation, around 2,800 Afghan migrants returned from Iran, both voluntarily and forcibly, on May 1, according to TOLOnews.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has characterised the state of human rights, particularly the rights of women and girls as well as religious and ethnic minorities in Afghanistan, as grave, citing the urgent need for humanitarian aid for 23.7 million people to survive.

According to the report, Iran and Pakistan host around 7.7 million Afghan citizens, approximately 1.6 million of whom have been deported to Afghanistan since 2021.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International and some human rights organisations have expressed concern about the continuation of the process of expelling Afghan migrants from Pakistan and demanded a halt to this trend.