IRAN RAMPS UP DEPORTATION OF AFGHAN MIGRANTS, EXPELS 3,000 A DAY

Thu 07 November 2024:

Iran has stepped up its deportation of undocumented Afghan migrants, with up to 3,000 individuals reportedly being sent back to Afghanistan each day.

According to Iran’s Director General of Foreign Nationals and Migrants of Khorasan Razavi, Hossein Sharafati, more than 3,000 Afghans are detained daily and deported through the Dogharun border following legal procedures.

Iran’s state news agency, IRNA, reported that Sharafati said on Saturday that undocumented Afghan nationals living in Khorasan province are identified, detained, and subsequently deported via the Dogharun border.

During a recent visit to Taybad city, Sharafati also inspected a 20-hectare plot of land designated for a new camp intended to hold “unauthorized Afghan nationals.”

This facility, proposed near the Dogharun border in Taybad, is intended to streamline the process of managing and deporting undocumented migrants.

The steep increase in deportations comes after Tehran recently took a stricter stance over undocumented Afghan migrants, after President Masoud Pezeshkian came into power.

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In September, the Iranian government announced it would deport two million undocumented foreigners over the next six months. When Iranian officials speak of “illegal foreigners,” they usually mean migrants from Afghanistan.

At the time, Iranian police chief Ahmad-Reza Radan said security forces and the Interior Ministry were working out measures that would deport “a considerable number of illegal foreigners” over the long term.

Last month United Nations’ mission in Afghanistan called for an investigation into reports that a large group of Afghan migrants had been shot and killed on the Afghanistan-Iran border.

Afghan media outlets including Tolo News, citing witnesses, said more than 200 Afghan migrants who entered Iran illegally were attacked on Iranian territory, and that dozens had been killed and injured.

Iran’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, denied the reports of the “death of dozens of illegal nationals” in a post on X.

Tolo News quoted an “Iranian human rights organisation” saying that Iranian border guards had attacked the migrants.

Iran and Afghanistan share a 900-kilometer long border, parts of which run through inaccessible, high mountain ranges.

The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR estimates that nearly 4.5 million Afghan nationals currently live in Iran. According to Iranian news agencies, however, the real number could be as high as 6 million or 8 million.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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