Fear grips Afghans in Karachi as Pakistan government announces evicting illegal immigrants
illegal immigrants living here in Pakistan's biggest city are spending their days and nights in fear following the government's announcement that some 1.7 illegal Afghan refugees will be sent back to their country by the end of this month. For most of the Afghan men, women and children living in the Hijra Colony and Afghan Basti nestled on the northern outskirts of Karachi, life has become hell since the government announcement as, according to them, the police have started a witch-hunt against them.
Islamabad has set November 1 as the deadline for all undocumented migrants, mainly Afghans, to voluntarily leave the country, warning of arrests and deportations after that date.
«Even those of us who have legal refugee status/cards are not being spared by the police who are viciously targeting our people all over Karachi,» Haji Abdullah, the head of the community in Afghan Basti told PTI.
Karachi is estimated to be home to some 300,000 Afghans, many of them coming over from Afghanistan during the Taliban takeover and residing here illegally.
Latest UN figures show some 1.3 million Afghans are registered refugees in Pakistan, while another 880,000 have legal status to stay in the country.
Pakistan's caretaker interior minister Sarfaraz Bugti, however, claimed there were over 1.7 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan who were not registered with the government and they were the ones who were going to be sent back home.
The majority of the Afghan refugees live in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and southwestern Balochistan provinces bordering Afghanistan but the southern Sindh province also hosts some 500,000 refugees with most of them in Karachi which provides them a chance to earn their livelihood easily.
