KABUL (SW) – Crippling poverty forced Ahmad to leave his family of seven people in Ghazni province and migrate to Iran for work ten months ago.
The 22-year-old was clearly dejected when he shared his ordeal with Salam Watandar. Ahmad said a human smuggler took two million IRR from him, and bundled him along with a number of other young Afghans for irregular migration to Iran via Nimroz. Kept hungry and thirsty during the journey, the migrants were taken to Isfahan after a treacherous journey.
He worked there tirelessly for eight months in Iran, but when he asked for payment, the Iranian supervisor handed him over to police. Holding his tears, Ahmad said the Iranian police physically tortured him, and forced him to join the fighting in Syria.
“I was asleep when the police came and said you are all Afghans, show us your documents. We said we have no documents, then they beat us and inquired if we were Shiite. I told them I am Shiite, they asked why you are not going to Syria to fight. I declined saying I have two minor children, they took me to the police station”, he recalled.
Ahmad is not alone to face such harsh attitude of the Iranian authorities. A number of his roommates went through the same ordeal. They said the Iranian police compelled the Shiite Afghans to join the Fatemiyoun Brigade to fight in Syria.
Reza, another 19-year-old Ghazni boy, said the Iranians gave two options to the Shiite Afghans, either go and fight in Syria or face deportation back to Afghanistan. Two minor boys, 14-year-old Mohammad and 15-year-old Sakhi from Faryab province were also in the batch of migrants.
The boys said they paid two million IRR to a human smuggler six months ago to take them to Iran. They said the smugglers traded them among a number of smugglers before they could reach Iran, and in the journey many of their compatriots lost their lives owing to the hardship of the journey.
According to local officials in Herat, dozens of Afghan boys, men and women are deported from Iran on daily basis. Javed Nadem, director refugees and repatriation in Herat, said 160,000 of them were forcefully deported and 250 others returned voluntarily last year. Among them included 68 women and 3500 children. He confirmed the Iranian authorities physically abuse the migrants, and at least three such cases have been formally registered by the deportees.
Commenting on this, Jailani Farhab, spokesman for the Herat governor, said much better treatment of the migrants is expected from the Iranian authorities. “We are hopeful the Islamic Republic of Iran, considering bilateral friendly and brotherly ties, would treat the Afghan refugees humanly and in line with Islamic principles, and this could naturally further improve our ties”.
The regional office of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission has raised grim concerns over the treatment of migrants in Iran. According to the AIHRC the trafficking of migrants from Afghanistan is executed in a planned way by mafia networks.
The National Referral Mechanism (NRM) is a mechanism which is developed by the Afghan government’s High Commission to combat trafficking and smuggling. The purpose of this mechanism is to help government and NGOs to identify, refer, assist, and protect the VoTs and prosecute traffickers in a coordinated manner as outlined in the Afghanistan TiP Law 2017.
Article 12 of the NRM underlines the responsibilities of the AIHRC as followed: It should prepare and implements programs to raise awareness about the threats of trafficking of humans and the migrants. It should help with legislation related to the trafficking of humans and the migrants. It should also monitor the state of the victims of trafficking of humans and the migrants. It should publish a quarterly report about the activities to the high commission against trafficking of humans and the migrants.
Meanwhile, the Iranian consulate office in Herat has rejected the allegations of ill treatment of migrants. It asserted anyone not having proper documents to live in Iran is legally bound to be deported back.
ENDS
