Afghanistan Times
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KABUL: A prominent human rights group on Sunday urged Pakistani police to stop expulsion of Afghan refugees from Pakistan amid reports of several forced expulsions, arrests and mistreatment of refugee community living in that country.
This comes after Afghanistan Embassy in Islamabad said last week that Pakistani police had detained 250 Afghan nationals who had legitimate travel documents. Some of them had been expelled from Pakistan.
Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) said the police treatment of refugees was “tragic” owing to the “serious threat” it poses to the lives of political activists, protesting women, former government officials, and artists fleeing persecution in Afghanistan.
It urged Pakistan authorities to refrain from detaining and deporting Afghan refugees and called on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to negotiate with Pakistan to protect Afghan refugees.
The AIHRC also called for a probe into the human rights situation of Afghan refugees in Pakistan and the establishment of support for them in accordance with the “accepted standards of refugee and migrant rights.”
In December 2022, Pakistan’s National Commission on Human Rights stated that women and children were among the 1,200 Afghan nationals being held at a high-security jail in Karachi, Pakistan.
Pictures of some Afghan children crammed into a cell of the central jail in Karachi went viral on social media, drawing appeals for their release along with their parents.
