Pakistan to deport Afghan women refugees staying illegally: Official

Islamabad [Pakistan], January 1 (ANI): A prison official in Karachi, Pakistan, said that from the first week of January, they will start deporting to Afghanistan, Afghan women who had been sentenced for living in the country without legal documents, reported TOLO News.
The TOLO News report said: "Pakistani police in multiple raids detained at least 1,200 Afghan nationals, including women and children who had entered the southern port city of Karachi without valid travel documents, officials said."
Some imprisoned Afghan women said that after their release from prison, they will return to Afghanistan.
Gul Khanda, 65, a prisoner in Pakistan, from Paktia, Afghanistan, as quoted by TOLO News, said: "Please let us go. We have been here for over two months. For God's sake let us go now. Please release us. We have served our two-month sentence. We should be released now. Have mercy on us for God's sake."
Nilofar, 67, a prisoner in Pakistan, from Parwan, said: "We came from Afghanistan. We are poor. My husband is old. He can't work. My two sons used to work for a brick kiln. If you don't want us to work here, let us go back to Afghanistan. We have a house there. We will go back home. I am sick and so are my two daughters-in-law. For God's sake, release us so we may go back home."
Sardar Ahmad Khan Shekib, the charge d'affaires of the Afghan embassy in Pakistan, said that nearly 2,000 Afghans are imprisoned in prisons in Pakistan and that their situation is concerning.
"Some of them don't have documents, and some of them have been detained in Karachi previously. There are about 2,000 of them. They were arrested by the police because they did not have legal documents, and were put in jail," he said, reported TOLO News.
Many Afghans came to Pakistan after the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan.
A recent report in The Diplomat magazine said that the Pakistani police have detained at least 1,200 Afghan migrants, including women and children, who had entered the southern port city of Karachi without proper documents.
The arrests drew condemnation from Afghanistan and UN bodies after images of locked-up Afghan children spread online. The detentions underscored the strained relations between the two South Asian neighbours, the Washington-based magazine reported citing officials.
A Khaama Press report said that the unexplained incarceration of Afghan refugees in Pakistan amidst the deteriorating security situation in Pakistan and growing tensions between the Taliban government and Islamabad over the border issue has complicated matters for the Afghan refugees. (ANI)