Refugees are reportedly dying in Pakistani prisons, and children are being arrested and tied together with ropes, as a wave of detentions and deportations spreads fearamong the hundreds of thousands of Afghans who have crossed the border since the Taliban took power.
According to lawyers representing Afghans in detention, at least four people have died in custody, and thousands more, including children, are being held in prisons as Pakistan hardens its stance against Afghan citizens.
The most recent death in custody was a 50-year-old Afghan man who was refused hospital treatment while he waited for a judge to hear his case, according to Moniza Kakar, a Karachi-based human rights lawyer who has been fighting to stop Afghan asylum seekers and refugees being deported to Afghanistan.
Kakar claimed that other Afghans in detention were being mistreated, and the judicial process was not being carried out properly by judges assigned to their cases. Photos have emerged on social media claiming to show refugee children bound together with ropes by police in Karachi.
“In this crackdown, registered and unregistered Afghans are facing the brunt,” she said. “More than 800 Afghans are in prisons in Karachi and across Sindh province alone, and at least 1,100 have been deported who had no documents.”
Earlier this week, the Guardian attended a deportation hearing in Karachi and witnessed dozens of shackled Afghan refugees and asylum seekers being held in cramped cells while they awaited their court hearing.
A young mother, Ayesha Bashir, was being held in a cell with her five-year-old daughter. She had been in detention for three months, she said, after crossing the border in north-west Pakistan and travelling to Karachi to consult a gynaecologist after multiple miscarriages.
“We were more than 20 people on a bus,” she said. “Before we entered Karachi, the police stopped the bus in the bordering town of Hub. They asked for our visas or identity cards, but we didn’t have any.”
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