MONITORING (SW) – Pakistan’s top court has been moved to paus the forced deportation of Afghan immigrants and asylum seekers.<\/p>\n
Several politicians and rights activists filed a petition with the Supreme Court (SC) on Wednesday challenging the \u201cmass deportation\u201d of Afghan refugees and asylum seekers by the caretaker government.<\/p>\n
The petitioners include PPP\u2019s Farhatullah Babar, Jamaat-i-Islami Pakistan Senator Mushtaq Ahmed, rights activist Amina Masood Janjua, National Democratic Movement Chairman Mohsin Dawar, lawyer Jibran Nasir, Rohail Kasi, Syed Muaz Shah, Pastor Ghazala Parveen, lawyer Iman Zainab Mazari, Ahmad Shabbar, Advocate Imran Shafiq, Luke Victor and Sijal Shafiq.<\/p>\n
The petition has not yet been accepted for hearing, reported Dawn news.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, the government\u00a0gave an ultimatum\u00a0to all undocumented immigrants to leave Pakistan by Oct 31 or else risk imprisonment and deportation to their respective countries.<\/p>\n
While the decision had prompted\u00a0criticism from Afghanistan\u00a0and\u00a0several other quarters, the caretakers refused to budge from the deadline,\u00a0insisting\u00a0the move was not aimed at any particular ethnic group.<\/p>\n
Of the more than four million Afghans living in Pakistan, the government\u00a0estimates\u00a01.7m are undocumented.<\/p>\n
The government has\u00a0decided\u00a0to keep foreign nationals residing in the country without identity documents in \u201cholding centres\u201d before deporting them to their respective countries.<\/p>\n
The petition filed with the SC today, a copy of which is available with\u00a0Dawn.com,<\/em>\u00a0was moved under Article 184(3) of the Constitution.<\/p>\n It named 15 respondents, including the federation through the caretaker premier, the government\u2019s apex committee through the interior secretary, all four provinces and the Islamabad Capital Territory, the chief commissioner for Afghan refugees, and the National Database and Registration Authority through its chairman.<\/p>\n It said that the government\u2019s decision to expel immigrants was causing a \u201cmassive violation of fundamental rights of around 4.4 million persons of Afghan origin who are for the time being in Pakistan\u201d.<\/p>\n It said that the decision amounted to reversing Pakistan\u2019s \u201c45-year-old policy of extending hospitality to refugees, asylum seekers and even unregistered immigrants \u2014 a strategic decision which falls completely beyond the limited constitutional mandate of the caretaker government\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cSince this repatriation is not voluntary, nor is the government of Afghanistan facilitating the same, it is possible that many of those being deported will die of cold and hunger \u2014 amongst them would be Pakistani citizens and genuine refugees who never stood a chance to prove their legal claims,\u201d the plea said.<\/p>\n It said that the issue of deporting undocumented Afghans had been brought up before elected federal cabinets that had opted for \u201cmore nuanced and humane solutions\u201d rather than a mass deportation policy.<\/p>\n The petition said that while the government\u2019s decision was \u201cframed in somewhat neutral language\u201d it was \u201cobviously targeted at the millions of Afghan refugees who are compelled by circumstances to live in Pakistan\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is extremely disturbing that instead of doing its job \u2014 preparing for elections \u2014 the caretaker government is taking strategic policy decisions whose consequence will be borne by the people of this country,\u201d the plea said.<\/p>\n The plea urged the court to declare the government\u2019s decision to expel illegal immigrants as \u201cillegal and unconstitutional\u201d and to set it aside.<\/p>\n It also urged the court to restrain the federation from \u201cdetaining, forcefully deporting or otherwise harassing anyone who is either a refugee or an asylum seeker\u201d and possessed proof of registration (PoR), Afghan citizenship cards (ACC), an asylum seeker application issued by the UNHCR or a pre-screening slip issued by its partners.<\/p>\n It also called on the court to restrain the federation from \u201cdetaining, forcefully deporting or otherwise harassing anyone who was born in Pakistan and has a claim to birthright citizenship\u201d.<\/p>\n It urged the court to direct the federation to permit UNHCR and its partner organisations to register and \u201cexpeditiously process and decide all asylum seeking applications filed by foreigners presently residing in Pakistan.\u201d<\/p>\n It also called for the federation to be directed to coordinate with federal and provincial law enforcement agencies to \u201csecure the fundamental rights of all persons for the time being in Pakistan\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n ENDS<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" MONITORING (SW) – Pakistan’s top court has been moved to paus the forced deportation of Afghan immigrants and asylum seekers. Several politicians and rights activists filed a petition with the Supreme Court (SC) on Wednesday challenging the \u201cmass deportation\u201d of Afghan refugees and asylum seekers by the caretaker government. The petitioners include PPP\u2019s Farhatullah Babar, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16095,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[990,984,9,372,976,16,979,194,393,31,8,4,899,6,7,178],"tags":[63,119,177,12],"class_list":["post-16094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-news","category-soceity","category-region","category-politics","category-report","category-humanitarian-crisis","category-world","category-locality","category-migration","category-governance","category-news_","category-trending","category-afghanistan","category-headline","category-pakistan","tag-refugees","tag-deportation","tag-pakistan","tag-afghanistan"],"views":96,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16094"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16098,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16094\/revisions\/16098"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}