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The Tajikistan authorities are rounding up Afghan refugees and forcing them to cross the border again into Afghanistan, regardless of some having been granted asylum in different international locations.
In accordance with reviews from Tajikistan’s 10,000-strong Afghan refugee group, persons are being picked up off the road and homes raided in a spate of latest round-ups of Afghan households, who’ve been sheltering within the nation because the Taliban seized energy in August 2021.
The UN’s refugee company, UNHCR, confirmed that 80 Afghan refugees and asylum seekers had been deported from Tajikistan since 16 August.
The UNHCR has appealed to the Tajikistan authorities to cease the compelled deportations. It isn’t clear what the motivation or coverage is behind them; till just a few weeks in the past the Tajikistan authorities was cooperating with the UNHCR to shelter and resettle Afghans fleeing the Taliban authorities.
The UNHCR mentioned it couldn’t “set up a single sample, whether or not it’s due to the authorized standing, their profiles, violation of the rule of keep, or different. It’s a combination of indiscriminate and focused arrests and deportation”.
Elizabeth Tan, UNHCR’s director of worldwide safety, mentioned: “We’re asking Tajikistan to cease detaining and deporting refugees, an motion that clearly places lives in danger.
“Pressured return of refugees is in opposition to the regulation and runs opposite to the precept of non-refoulement, a cornerstone of worldwide refugee regulation,” she mentioned, referring to the authorized tenet that forbids a rustic receiving asylum seekers from returning them to someplace they might be liable to persecution.
The UN documented a case of 5 Afghans compelled again on 23 August. They included “a household comprising three youngsters and their mom, [and] had been returned to Afghanistan by means of the Panji Poyon border checkpoint in southern Tajikistan, regardless of UNHCR’s interventions to halt the deportations”, the UN company acknowledged.
Afghans in Tajikistan who spoke to the Guardian say that the numbers being compelled again over the land border into Afghanistan is working into the tons of, with compelled deportations growing over the previous fortnight. They mentioned that many Afghan refugees had been being despatched again with out passports or id paperwork and left to fend for themselves, with no means of attending to a spot of security.
For almost every week, nobody in Samira’s household has dared to step out of their flat in a small city in northern Tajikistan. Her youngsters haven’t been to high school they usually haven’t felt secure sufficient to get groceries or medical provides.
Throughout them, they are saying, different members of the Afghan refugee group are being detained and forcibly deported again to their house nation with out clear motive or justification.
“We live with a whole lot of worry that we is perhaps detained by the police and deported at any minute,” mentioned Samira*, a former safety official who escaped Afghanistan after repeated makes an attempt on her life.
“We will likely be arrested by the Taliban the second we enter Afghanistan. I spent years combating them, they may search their revenge.”
“Even these with correct paperwork and ongoing asylum circumstances in western international locations are being picked from the streets and dropped off on the border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan … which is why we stopped going outdoors,” mentioned Ejaz*, Samira’s husband.
“With one of many households we all know, the husband was deported with out even being allowed to enchantment in opposition to the choice or see his spouse and youngsters. The household had a flight scheduled for 12 September to Canada, the place they had been emigrating. However now the husband is again in Afghanistan, whereas the spouse and two youngsters are struggling to outlive right here.”
Maryam, a former Afghan media character who fled to Turkey to flee the Taliban, is frantic with fear for the remainder of her household, who’re refugees in Tajikistan. They’ve locked themselves inside their house and reside in terror.
“They advised me that it began with Afghans being rounded up from the streets, so that they stopped leaving their houses. However then they [authorities] began raiding houses and picked up individuals from their locations of labor,” she mentioned.
“I’m afraid to speak to them on the cellphone or to verify in with associates. Everyone seems to be afraid they are going to be tracked and deported.”
Whereas Samira and her household are additionally within the closing phases of emigrating to Canada, she is racked with dread over the deportations. Her concern is principally for her youngsters, who’ve already skilled immense trauma. “The refugee life has been arduous on youngsters. They deserved a greater future,” she mentioned.
The Tajikistan authorities have been contacted for remark.
* Names have been modified to guard their id
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