By Lalah Shams*
It was around 2 a.m. in late July when Shekoofa*, a reporter, and her husband Faisal* were woken by a loud knock on the door of their home in Pakistan. They’d lived there since fleeing Pakistan after the Taliban threatened their lives. After Faisal opened the door, at least seven Pakistani police officers came inside, while another dozen armed men surrounded the house.
The Afghan couple were terrified as the officers asked them for their residency documents and visas, which had expired. Though they’d applied for their visa renewals two months earlier, and had a letter from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Pakistan that allowed them to move freely, the officers weren’t satisfied. They searched the house and mistreated the couple. “First, they got us out of our house on the pretext that they were completing some procedure,” Shekoofa tells Zan Times. They also forced her to sign documents without allowing her to read them first. “They took my husband to jail with beatings and blows,” she asys.
During Faisal’s 48-hour imprisonment, he was tortured by Pakistani authorities, Shekoofa explains. Finally, after she paid 100,000 Pakistani rupees ($340) to the officials, he was released. He wasn’t alone – there were around 20 other migrants from Afghanistan in the detention centre. All needed to pay the officials to be released.
And this isn’t the first time that Faisal was rounded up and had to pay to be released. During the last 18 months, he’s been arrested five times, all under similar circumstances. So many are enduring the same fate that, in June 2023, Amnesty International asked the Pakistan government to stop detaining and harassing migrants and refugees from Afghanistan.
Another migrant couple, Samira* and Rahman*, suffered a similar fate nearly a year ago. On the night of October 18, 2022, armed Pakistani troops surrounded their migrant neighbourhood in Islamabad and systematically inspected everyone’s residency documents. Around 65 men were taken into custody, including Rahman. “I was worried about my wife and children — they were scared, and my youngest daughter was crying a lot,” Rahman recounts. “They were terrorized.”
Faisal says that after they were arrested, they were collectively taken to a police station and detained: “During the interrogations, they insulted us multiple times and beat us.”
Pakistani police asked them for 2,000 Pakistani Rupees for their release; however, most of them, including Faisal, couldn’t afford this due to their poverty. Even though nearly fifty women went to the police station the next day to secure the release of the men in their families, they were sent back to their homes after being mistreated and threatened with forced deportation.
Samira had to go to the United Nations offices multiple times for her husband’s release until finally, with the intervention of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, her husband was released after three days of detention.
Rahman was an academic before he fled to Pakistan. Samira and their four children stayed behind. She worked in an office in Daikundi province but after becoming scared for her life as the security situation deteriorated in Afghanistan, they also decided to flee. “We had to pretend that our daughter was sick to come to Pakistan,” she explains.
Life has been difficult in Pakistan. “My husband was a scientific director at one of the universities in Daikundi. Now that we’ve come here, he’s doing whatever hard work he can find,” Samira explains. Though he found work in a food shop, they still struggle to rent a home.
In addition, they’ve had to deal with increased harassment by Pakistani authorities. Amnesty International states that many migrants don’t have identification cards and their regular visas have expired because of significant delays in the registration process. The organization adds that the situation is dire for women and girls facing discrimination in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The Islamabad police patrol areas with large migrant populations, such as B17, D17, F17, Barkaou, and Peshawar Mor, and frequently detain migrants, claiming that they have problematic residency documents. Accurate statistics on the number of migrants being arrested and detained by the Pakistani government are not available. Manizha Kakar, an advocate for migrants’ rights in Pakistan, tells Zan Times that more than 3,700 migrants have been detained and later released by Pakistani security forces, while another 2,516 others have been forcibly returned to Afghanistan, all since July 2023.
Nadia* and her seven-member family spent two million Pakistani rupees ($9,100) on Pakistani visas in their effort to escape Afghanistan. Now, they are being forced to pay 40,000 Pakistani rupees ($180) every two months to renew their visas. The demands for money don’t end there. “Every police officer and agent separately demands money, and if we don’t pay, they threaten to deport us,” Nadia tells Zan Times.
In June 2023, they again paid to renew their visas, but had yet to receive the updated documents. “We are afraid of being detained,” she says. “We can’t move freely.”
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees and writer. Lalah Shams is the pseudonym of a journalist in Afghanistan.
