Afghan Refugees Face Human Right Abuse and Deportation from and Iran

(Hashet-e Subh) The Islamic Republic of Iran has deliberately pursued repressive, violent and unfriendly

policies against foreign nationals and refugees, particularly for Afghan refugees.

Since 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan which was followed by destructive civil wars in the 1990s, millions of people desperately fled the country and were refugees to the neighboring Iran and Pakistan via illegal and dangerous trafficking routes.

An estimated 3 million people from Afghanistan, most of whom are undocumented refugees live in Iran. Indeed, with the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, the statistics changed. With the emergence of the Taliban on the scenes last August, journalists, former government staff and affiliates of international organizations, civil activists, political figures and millions of ordinary citizens fled Afghanistan to escape the possible torture and persecution by Taliban rebels.

According to statistics, approximately, one million people have reached Iran via land borders since August 2021. At the same time, Iran’s policies toward foreign nationals have dramatically become more hostile and aggressive.

There have been reports recently indicating that the Iranian government has been deporting thousands of Afghan refugees on a daily basis. The move comes after an Uzbek-Afghan terrorist affiliated with Jihadi groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan stabbed two Iranian clerics to death at an Iranian shrine in Mashhad city. Although the terrorist and six others were arrested in connection with the incident, the incident provided grounds for the harassment of refugees’ community in Iran.

Afghanistan’s diaspora community has not only been unloved by the Iranian government, but has also been harassed by ordinary Iranians. Following the terrorist incident that took place in the shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad, all security personnel and ordinary people of Iran have been torturing the Afghan refugees for the sack of revenge. Photos and videos footages on social media show bloody scenes in which groups of police and Iranians beat and torture immigrants across the country. The persecution of refugees in Iran is so severe and inhumane that all international humanitarian and immigrant laws are violated in the process.