GHOR (SW) – Every day, hundreds of children, teenagers, and elderly return to Afghanistan from Iran, each with tragic stories of their own.
Gul Mohammad, 20-year-old, has been deported to Ghor province after being captured by Iranian police two days ago. The young man, like hundreds of other migrants, has faced traumatic events throughout his irregular immigration to Iran.
Two months ago, Gul Mohammad, along with a number of other young Afghans, entered Pakistan first through Nimroz and then into Iran to escape war, unemployment and poverty in his province.
Gul Mohammad spent nine days and nights on the road and spent two days and nights barefoot on difficult refugee routes. He said he faced many difficulties on the way to Iran, his sandals were torn, but he was eventually repatriated.
What happened to Gul Mohammad does not end here. After arriving in Tehran, he somehow found work on a farm, but was arrested two months later by Iranian police. He experienced the bitter grief and pain of falling into the hands of Iranian forces, facing insults and humiliations, beatings and other hardships, all of which he and his fellows endured.
The young man said that the Iranian police forces broke his hands and beat him severely under many pretexts, including entering Iran.
It is not just Gul Mohammad who has faced so many problems with irregular immigration to Iran, but hundreds of other immigrants like him face the same fate every day.
23-year-old Ahmad is another young man from Ghor who has experienced what Gul Mohammad went through. He said he was tied and made to run after a car for half an hour after being captured by Iranian police. The young man recalled he spent days and nights in the deserts and mountains without food or water to drink. According to Ahmad, when captured by Iranian forces, the migrants are made to clean up all the rubbish at the checkpoints with their hands.
The tragic stories of Afghan refugees in Iran do not end with the mistreatment by the hands of the police. They are also harassed by traffickers.
Javed Nadeem, director of refugee and returnee affairs in Herat, told Salam Watandar that he had not yet received any complaints about the mistreatment of refugees by Iranian police. He vowed any such complaints would be investigated and pursued.
He added that for the past two months, the Iranian government has been forcibly repatriating Afghan refugees and that between 200 and 600 Afghan refugees are being forcefully repatriated daily through Islam Qala border crossing. According to him, some 15,000 Afghan refugees have been forcibly repatriated through the Islam Qala border crossing in the past two months.
In view of the dire consequences of child trafficking, the Article 511, paragraph 2, of the Penal Code, refers to the perpetrators of child trafficking as: “If convicted, the perpetrator could face up to 10 years in prison.”
However, Jilani Farhad, spokesman for Herat’s governor, said if there were any such complaints, they would discuss them with Iranian officials.
Iran’s diplomatic mission in Herat has also denied reports about the country’s security forces mistreating Afghan refugees. It has said anyone without legal documents is not allowed to stay in Iran and should return to their home countries.
ENDS
