PESHAWAR: The Haripur police have banned Afghan refugees, both registered and unregistered, from living in the city limits and asked them to restrict their movement to the designated camp at nighttime.

The development comes days before the state and frontier regions ministry plans to host a high-level meeting to decide the fate of over two million unregistered Afghans living in the country.

In the meeting slated to take place in Islamabad on January 6, chief secretaries of the four provinces, chief commissioner of Afghan refugees, interior secretary and senior officials of the intelligence agencies will make a strategy for the deportation of undocumented Afghans.

The sources say the police have put restrictions on the movement in and entry of both registered and unregistered Afghans to Haripur in line with the provincial government’s Dec 19 decision that movement of registered refugees would be restricted to their camps in the province.

Police ask refugees to limit movement to camp after dark

District police officer Haripur Khurram Rasheed told Dawn over the telephone that the restriction had been imposed under Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure in light of the current delicate security situation.

He said around 100,000 Afghan refugees lived at a local camp.

The DPO said restriction on the movement of Afghans was placed around a year ago and the police had renewed the previous order for it only.

He said the decision was made to restrict the movement of Afghan refugees from 8.00pm to 8.00am.

Khurram Rasheed said the order was applicable to both registered and unregistered Afghans.

He said keeping in view the situation in the district, the police had taken the step to avert any untoward incident.

The DPO said Section 144, which restricted the assembly of five or more at a place, would also be applicable to Afghans with PoR cards.

The federal government had issued PoR cards to 1.6 million Afghan refugees allowing them to stay in the country until December 27.

The police can’t arrest the PoR card holders until they’re involved in criminal activities.

A Haripur resident told Dawn that announcements were made in different localities on loudspeakers asking Afghan refugees to vacate in three days the houses, if any, they had rented within the city.

An official of the Haripur city police station said the police had told Afghans in clear terms to vacate their rented accommodations and shift to their camp located outside the city.

He said Afghan businessmen were permitted to visit the city after 8am but had to leave the city area before 8pm.

The police have been taking steps in isolation in their respective districts of the province since the Taliban killed 151 people, mostly children, in a Peshawar school attack.

The Peshawar police have launched a campaign in different localities of the city for the identification of Afghan nationals.

When approached, home and tribal affairs secretary Akhtar Ali Shah said the police had been given orders to act against all foreigners, including Afghans, who had been residing in the province without legal documents.

He said undocumented foreigners would be deported to their respective countries.

The secretary said under the federal government policy, registered refugees could stay in the province, so the police won’t arrest them.

Published in Dawn, December 28th, 2014