A day after CNN-News18 reported Pakistan’s new refugee policy with plans to throw out over a million Afghan asylum seekers, Afghanistan’s defence minister launched a searing attack on the neighbouring nation.
While around 1.3 million Afghans are registered refugees in Pakistan and 880,000 more have legal status to remain, caretaker interior minister Sarfraz Bugti has alleged that a further 1.7 million Afghans are in Pakistan illegally.
Acting defence minister of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) Mawlavi Mohammad Yaqoob Mujahid said in Kabul on Thursday: “The decision that Pakistan has taken, that it will deport Afghan refugees from Pakistan by November 1, is a very cruel and unjust decision. Stop this cruelty and brutality, this decision will worsen the situation between the two countries, and this effort that we both are making jointly, that we should fix things with each other, so with cruelty and brutality, we cannot move forward, and we wish, and we request the United Nations and other human rights organisations, to come to the field and stop the hands of Pakistan from this cruelty. It is barbarism, which will not be accepted in any case, and we appeal to stop it at all costs, and we request all the wealthy Afghans who are currently living in Pakistan, to remove your properties and wealth from Pakistan. Take it out and transfer it to Afghanistan, and destroy the economy that Pakistan has built on the shoulders of you people, and serve your Afghanistan and your people.”
Pakistan is not a signatory to the 1951 Geneva Convention and its 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees. It governs the entry and presence of refugees under the country’s Foreigner’s Act, which allows authorities to apprehend, detain, and expel foreigners, including refugees and asylum seekers lacking proper documentation.
“The brutality and barbarism of Pakistan against Afghan refugees is unbearable,” said Mujahid. “It is a great injustice, it is brutal and it cannot be justified in any way.”
Pakistan has also banned the export of 212 items to Afghanistan under the Transit Trade Agreement. CNN-News18 has accessed the ministry of commerce’s notification on the issue, which includes items like 17 types of clothes, all types of vehicle tires, tea leaves, cosmetics, dozens of toiletries, nuts, dry and fresh fruits, refrigerators, air conditioners, juicers, and mixer blenders.
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