KARACHI, Jan 8: The Afghan nationals imprisoned in the city jails under the Foreigners Act are at the receiving end as the next phase of the refugees’ repatriation will begin in mid- February.
According to an agreement between Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) nearly 400,000 Afghan refugees would be repatriated each year. The UNHCR had earlier claimed that under the first phase it had, from April to mid-October last year, assisted 1.5 million Afghans to return to their country, and would help another 1.8 million during the second phase of the repatriation process from mid-February to reach their homeland.
However, the Afghan refugees in Karachi, whose number is roughly over 400,000, were experiencing hardships in reaching their country due to the absence of proper guidance and legal assistance.
The worst sufferers were the refugees who were detained under the Foreigners Act as they had no other choice but to contact the Afghan Consulate. Many of them, in sheer depression, had applied for deportation to their country of origin though refugees’ deportation amounts to the violation of the mandate of the UNHCR under the UN Convention of Refugees-1951.
A number of Afghan nationals, interviewed by Dawn, complained that the refugees in the city were forced to apply for deportation because the UNHCR field office here was neither protecting their rights nor providing proper legal assistance to those who were imprisoned under the provisions of the Act.
A refugee, who is running a business at Tariq Road, said that the Afghans detained under the Foreigners Act often contact their consulate to get them released or at least get them deported.
Some other refugees deplored that the UNHCR was not playing its due role in protecting their rights.
Expressing similar views, the Afghan refugees, who are currently residing in the Mohajir Camp area or in the localities along the Super Highway, demanded the setting up of legal assistance centres to safeguard their rights.
They claimed that some of the Afghan prisoners, despite getting bail orders from the court of law, could not secure their release owing to certain restrictions imposed by the Sindh home department.
They said that such restrictions and conditions had frustrated the Afghan nationals and were applying for deportation.
Citing an example, they said that in a case of an Afghan refugee (titled state Vs Wali Jan in Case No 427, FIR No 183/2002 of Chakiwara police station), the counsel appearing on behalf of the UNHCR himself made application to the home department for deportation of the accused who was denied bail by the court.
When an NGO, the Society for Human Rights and Prisoners Aid (SHARP) which had been repatriating the refugees as an implementing partner to the UNHCR, was contacted to know the plight of Afghan refugees, its project coordinator for Sindh, H. M. Abbass, said that the society had already closed its operation in Karachi last month following cancellation of its contract.
He, however, supported the refugees’ demand of setting up guidance and assistance units, saying that SHARP chairman Syed Liaquat Binori had already advocated the need for establishing a number of legal assistance units throughout the country for providing legal assistance to the Afghans detained in the Pakistani prisons.
“In fact, the Foreigners Act does not apply on Afghans as the government had given them the status of refugees on humanitarian grounds,” he opined, claiming that hundreds of them were detained in Karachi.