Afghan refugees expelled from Iran are subjected to cruel treatment and rising hostility as they face physical and psychological torture in detention camps. Every day, up to 3,000 Afghans, including those who spent years in Iran, are being repatriated back to Afghanistan. A majority of these refugees were deported for having entered Iran illegally or having overstayed their visas.
The Iranian detention centers are inhumane, according to the refugees. The individuals described that they were beaten, compacted into overpopulated camps, and deprived of such basic needs as food and water. A refugee named Abdul Basir describes how he was tied up and battered while his valid passport was torn into pieces. Fazila Qaderi described the brutal treatment she and her husband had received at the hands of the guards, battering them mercilessly with metal batons for days on end.
Iranian officials say the deportations are conducted “with dignity,” but accounts of the refugees themselves are hardly that kind of description. Being forced out of the country at a rapid pace, they will have to abandon their properties, homes, and whatever savings they had. Iran has been a haven for up to three million Afghan refugees since the early 1980s, but current economic instability and growing anti-immigration sentiment have speeded up the deportation process, leaving around two million undocumented Afghans vulnerable to deportation.
The same situation repeats those of the refugee crackdown in its neighboring Pakistan, where hundreds of thousands of Afghans have been deported. Both the countries are loaded with their internal economic challenges that have amplified the anti-refugee sentiment.
