Rights activists save three Afghan children with legal documents from deportation

Rights activists on Saturday claimed to have recovered three Afghan children holding POR cards from detention centres set up for illegal foreigners to be deported from the country.

The recovered children included two brothers, 16-year-old Shamsur Rahman and 14-year-old Faizur Rahman, and 19-year-old Mir Ahmed.

Rights activist and lawyer Samar Abbas said that the children were caught by police from their homes and sent to the detention centres. However, their families approached civil society organisations for help. According to Abbas, police handed over both the brothers to their father at the Sohrab Goth SP office. They both were born in Pakistan and had valid POR cards.

Meanwhile, 19-year-old Ahmed was also saved from deportation. Advocate Moniza Kakar, who provides free legal assistance to Afghan refugees, said that initially, police denied arrest of POR card holder Afghan children but when they were provided evidence, such children were released. Commenting on the situation, Saeed Husain, an anthropologist who has done research on the Pakhtun migration in Karachi, said police, FIA and other law enforcement officials have little to no clue about how people are supposed to be processed.

He alleged that law enforcers have been harassing registered Afghans and even Pakistani CNIC holders by unlawfully detaining them. “Families lucky enough to have resources make it to Sultanabad to find their loved ones.”

A few days earlier, fifty-six civil society members, including lawyers, professors, journalists, doctors, researchers and activists, issued a joint statement criticising the deportation of Afghan refugees and migrants from Pakistan, and asked the caretaker government to immediately halt the arrest of refugees.