Pakistani Police Arrested More Than A Thousand Afghan Immigrants

Pakistani police forces in Sindh state in a series of security operations on December 29 and 30, arrested 1,400 Afghan nationals, including 139 women and 165 children, as well as more than 1,000 men for not having valid travel and residence documents in Karachi.

These people are imprisoned in the women’s prison, the central prison and the delinquent juvenile industrial school (the place where juvenile prisoners are kept) in the city of Karachi.

The Prisoners’ Welfare Committee and the National Human Rights Commission of Pakistan have announced in a statement that some of the arrested Afghan nationals were sentenced to short-term imprisonment in the local court of Karachi and will be deported to their country (Afghanistan) after serving their sentence.

On the other hand, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, the spokesman of the Taliban’s foreign ministry, said, “Taliban embassy officials in Pakistan have expressed their concerns about the imprisonment of Afghan immigrants in a meeting with the authorities of this country, and the Pakistani authorities have promised their quick release, but Pakistan has not fulfilled its obligations so far.”

According to the UN report, 1.3 million legal refugees and more than one million illegal Afghan refugees reside in Pakistan. According to the Foreign Nationals Act of 1946, the government of Pakistan has the right to deport those who have entered Pakistan illegally. In this regard, the Ministry of Interior of Pakistan issued a notification in October 2022 and announced that foreign nationals who do not have legal documents in Pakistan have until the end of December 2022 to leave Pakistan, otherwise they will will face imprisonment and paying a fine.