By Nazir Shinwari in TOLOnews, Sept 24, 2023 at 9:51 PM
The consul of the Islamic Emirate in Karachi, Abdul Jabar Takhari, said that hundreds of Afghan refugees have been detained over the last 15 days.
Takhari said that the detentions of the Afghan refugees by the Pakistani police is continuing.
He called on the Pakistani government to stop detentions of registered refugees of Afghanistan.
“The process of detaining Afghans has been continuing by Pakistan’s police. More than 900 Afghan refugees have been so far detained. However, 200 of them were released by the efforts of the consulates,” Takhari said.
The Afghan refugees in Pakistan urged the interim Afghan government to help them.
Ghafar, an Afghan refugee in a Pakistani prison, expressed his frustration and said: “We have a bad situation in Pakistan’s prisons. The Pakistan police have been mistreating us and oppressing us.”
“There is a lot of pressure on us here. It has been a long time since we were in Pakistan’s prisons. We call on the Islamic Emirate to release us from the prisons,” said an Afghan refugee in a Pakistan’s prison.
The Caretaker Federal Government of Pakistan in a letter instructed the authorities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to not disturb Afghan refugees.
The letter said that “harassing, arresting and detaining” registered Afghan refugees would “adversely” affect Pakistan’s “goodwill earned over the past forty-three years” with Afghanistan.
The accuracy of the letter was confirmed by the Pakistani embassy in Kabul.
Refugees’ rights activists said that the process of detaining refugees should be stopped and that their conditions should be addressed.
“The Afghan refugees in Pakistan are being harassed by Pakistan police and they are taking bribes,” said Sediqullah Kakar, a refugee rights activist in Pakistan.
According to the consulate of the Islamic Emirate in Karachi, more than 100,000 refugees have returned to Afghanistan via Torkham and Spin Boldak ports.
https://tolonews.com/afghanistan-185248
