Afghan refugees residing in the country have asked the Afghan government to discuss with the Pakistan government the issue of forcible expulsion of refugees from Pakistan within one month.
According to t details, the refugees are worried about their forcible repatriation after Pakistan issued a month-long deadline to Afghan refugees residing in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) to go back to Afghanistan.
“We do not accept this deadline,” said Meyakhil, an Afghan refugee in Peshawar.
“It is impossible for us to shift within a month after having lived here for more than a decade,” he said.
The deadline was issued by the KP government after terrorists attacked an Army Public School and College Peshawar, killing at least 150 people, mostly children. Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed the attack but the Pakistani government believes that the mastermind of the attack is in Afghanistan.
“The provincial cabinet has decided to expel all Afghan refugees within 30 days,” KP government spokesman Mushtaq Ghani said.
“The time has come for the federal government to take practical steps for the repatriation of Afghan refugees.”
Ghani added the Afghan refugees must now return to their country, adding that the refugees were a major burden on Pakistan.
However, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman in Pakistan Qaiser Afridi said that based on the trilateral decision between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the UN, Afghan refugees are allowed to stay in Pakistan till end of 2015.
According to UN statistics, nearly three million Afghan refugees are currently residing in Pakistan out of which only about 1.5 million are registered with the government of Pakistan.
