PHC postpones hearing into Afghan artistes’ petitions

PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Wednesday postponed hearing in the Afghan artistes and transgender persons’ petitions seeking directives for the government against their possible enforced deportation, saying they will be persecuted in Afghanistan now being ruled by the Taliban.

A division bench of the PHC comprising Justice SM Attique Shah and Justice Syed Arshad Ali heard the petition while Mumtaz Ahmad advocate appeared for the petitioners.Counsel for Hashmatullah and others said that Afghan artistes had filed petitions that they were singers by profession and lived in Pakistan as refugees.

Upon this, Justice Arshad Ali said that such identical petitions were filed before the Supreme Court and now being heard.However, the petitioners’ counsel said that those applications had been filed through the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan against the forced repatriation of Afghan refugees.

He pleaded that these petitions had been filed by Afghan artistes and transgender persons in the PHC, which were clubbed seeking relief for stay in Pakistan.The bench said that the petitioners should withdraw their appeals from the PHC and should become a party in the SC case. The court later postponed hearing in the case.

During the previous hearing, the petitioners’ counsel had suggested that it would be appropriate for the high court to wait for the outcome of those petitions in the apex court and to decide the instant plea in the light of that decision.

He had claimed that after the takeover by the Taliban, life for artists in Afghanistan was very dangerous and miserable as the government had announced that it wouldn’t tolerate such activities.

He added that like thousands of other Afghans, they fled their country along with families and lived in Pakistan.The petitioners had requested the court to issue directives to the government to allow them to live an undisturbed and peaceful life as refugees in Pakistan.However, the bench had observed that the status of petitioners was not that of refugees.