April 16, 2025
By Xari Jalil
LAHORE
An Afghan woman journalist who was earlier detained by the Islamabad police has now been released. Freshta Sadid who was living in B-17 area, was picked up by the Islamabad police on Monday night, under the Pakistan government’s broader campaign of the Afghan refugee deportation program. She was kept in Haji Camp – a detention facility where Afghan refugees are taken as per protocol for deportation process. She was released late Tuesday night.
However until her actual release, Sadid, who was a journalist in Afghanistan, for Radio Bahar in the Kapisa province, faced the risk of being deported to her home country where she had fled from, in fear of being taken in by the Taliban government. Sadid was known to report human rights violations, and is one of the many journalists who became immediately vulnerable since the Fall of Kabul in 2021.
The Taliban have a history of targeting journalists, especially women journalists, and those who are critical of their regime. They have imposed severe restrictions on the media, and those who don’t comply or who report on issues the Taliban deem unfavorable face threats, intimidation, detention, and violence.
The Afghanistan Journalists Support Organization (AJSO) announced that Freshta Sadid had fled Afghanistan because of her reporting on human rights issues.
Journalists condemn Sadids detention
In a statement, the AJSO, a Germany-based advocacy group for exiled journalists led by Hamid Obaidi, denounced how Sadeed was taken into custody and kept for so long raising fears of her deportation.
“Journalism is not a crime,” the organization had stated, urging Pakistani authorities to comply with international legal protections for refugees and press freedom. “We urge Pakistani authorities to respect international laws protecting refugees and media workers.”
The group also criticized what it described as a growing pattern of mistreatment and legal uncertainty facing Afghan journalists in Pakistan. AJSO called on the Pakistani government to ensure that Afghan migrants are treated in accordance with international human rights standards. They also appealed to embassies, international organizations, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to expedite the resettlement of Afghan journalists facing imminent threats.
“The safety, freedom, and dignity of Afghan journalists must rise above political calculations,” the organization said. “Concrete and urgent action is needed to protect their lives and future.”
Meanwhile, speaking on behalf of Freedom Network, an organization for journalists’ rights, Afzal Butt, the President of the Pakistan Federal Union for Journalists (PFUJ) called for the immediate release of Sadid.
“There are many (Afghan) journalist refugees, whose lives are in danger,” he said. “The government of Pakistan must find some way out for those Afghan journalists. The Taliban have put up head money for them. There must be some way or the other out of this situation, so that their lives are not put in danger.”
A civil society group consisting of lawyers and activists – the Joint Action Committee for Refugees (JAC-R) – has been calling for urgent action ever since Sadid was detained, and also reiterated that she was on the Taliban’s ‘hit list’.
“Freshta Sadid holds a valid exit-permit,” a member of JAC-R told Voicepk. “She even had tickets to the country she is to travel to. The government cannot just detain her like this.”
While Sadid’s documents checked out, and she was later released, the issue did not die down because the cause for concern among human rights activists remains.
The first complaint that they bring up is centered around discrimination against the Afghan community and by extention the Pushtun community living in and around Islamabad and Rawalpindi.
“Usually what is required is a solid proof of a registration card,” says Khushal Khattak, a senior member of the National Democratic Movement (NDM). “But the police indulges in straightforward harassment much of the time. They pick up anyone who looks ethnically Pushtun, take them to the police station and then release them sometimes after they extort money from them. Now, most of these people are poor, working class people.”
Khattak says that even those Afghans who show their POR () cards are picked up by the police. “Now they have begun picking up women, or entire families too,” he says. He says discrimination by the police had tapered down in the middle, but a new wave had now risen again.
The situation is so bad, that an Islamabad based activist, on condition of anonymity says that when Afghan families approach, he often advises them to leave the city and travel to Peshawar.
“Because they stand out more in Islamabad, it is worse for them,” he says. “In Peshawar or other parts of KP, it is less likely to discern an Afghan from a local Pushtun, But here and in other parts of Punjab there is a lot of ethnic discrimination.”
Illegalities
Unlike many other countries, Pakistan is not a signatory to the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention that protects the rights of refugees. It also lacks domestic laws that protect refugees, or eve any procedures to determine the status of individuals seeking international protection within its borders.
However, Quetta lawyer Ruhail Kasi, who works on refugee cases, says that he and all other lawyers who battle for refugees must challenge the country’s policy.
“It is first and foremost illegal to deport the refugees,” he says. A large percentage of them have POR cards or ACC cards which makes it all the more reason that they remain under state protection.”
This means that although Pakistan has not signed any international conventions, it has however signed a tripartite agreement with the Pakistan, and Afghanistan governments and the UNHCR all being stakeholders. Under this agreement, refugees that come to either country must be protected by the State and cannot be deported to their home country unless they have free will.
Farooq Nasser, an Islamabad based lawyer, tells Voicepk that they have repeatedly applied for writs, but they have been rejected.
“Refugees under the bi-lateral agreement must be given POR cards,” he says. “If there are refugees there are protocols to be followed. At least 800,000 refugees were given blue POR cards. Then later they created the Afghan Citizen Cards and 13,000,000 people were issued those. So although they are living here as Afghan citizens, they still cannot be deported.”
The majority of those being deported are reported to be undocumented Afghans. Pakistan also hosts a large number of registered Afghan refugees with Proof of Registration (PoR) cards and Afghan Citizen Cards (ACC). The government’s stance on these categories has shifted, with ACC holders also facing deportation orders. The validity of PoR cards has been extended until June 2025.
Nasser says that the biggest issue raised by human rights activists is that when the government has signed agreements, how can they send them back?
“These are extremely vulnerable people who can all be killed if they go back and if nothing they can even starve to death without their jobs,” he says, specifying that many of them are musicians who cannot make a living in a land where art is banned. There are also people from the LGBT community who face intense discrimination, and often cannot find work because their outward appearance.
“And of course women are equally vulnerable,” he says. “But the way the authorities are cracking down on them is another issue. They are raiding homes, and separating families. In many of the cases, husband can be Afghan and wife Pakistani, or vice versa – what do such families do? Can they live separately across two different countries?”
Nasser also talks about the way refugees are being treated.
“They are being sent back like animals, just thrown into detention camps, like criminals,” he says. “On top of it all, when they cross borders they cannot even take their belongings, nor can they meet a lawyer while in the detention center. This kind of discrimination is worst in Punjab and in Karachi – these are the reports we have been getting.”
‘Being Afghan is not a crime
Advocate Farooq Nasser adds that so far media narratives have projected anyone Afghan to be close to being criminal – even having links with terrorism.
“Terrorism must be seen subjectively,” he says. “It is inhumane the way the Afghans are being treated. Not everyone everywhere is criminal and you cannot be so xenophobic.” He says the majority of the Afghans who came after 2021 have been deported. Many of them need to stay in Pakistan until the next country they are seeking asylum is accepts their visa applications. But even for the latter category the Pakistan government has given tight deadlines.”
The UNHCR reported that between January 2021 and February 2022, they documented 117,547 new arrivals from Afghanistan in Pakistan, with a significant peak in August 2021. The Pakistani government estimates that around 600,000 to 800,000 Afghans have sought refuge in the country since the events of August 2021.
In September 2023, Pakistan launched a large-scale crackdown on undocumented foreigners, especially Afghans. Since the implementation of the “Illegal Foreigners’ Repatriation Plan,” over 800,000 undocumented Afghans have reportedly returned to Afghanistan. (Between September 2023 and February 2025, at least 844,499 Afghan nationals were forcibly deported back to Afghanistan. In just the first half of 2024, over 156,000 Afghans returned from Pakistan.)
The government has cited increasing crime and violence, alleging the involvement of Afghan nationals, as the primary reason for the repatriation plan
Meanwhile in a press conference on Wednesday, JUI-F leader Fazlur Rehman said that the government must differentiate between terrorists and Afghans.
“The forced displacement of the Afghans is a serious humanitarian and political problem,” he said, adding that it was a problem common to both Pakistan and Afghanistan, which should be addressed seriously. He objected over the way the refugees were being treated – packed off in buses and vans, and then simply ‘served a glass of juice at the border’.
“Then they claim they are treating them with respect; it’s a joke,” he said. “You cannot also paint everything with the same brush. We have been supporting a militant war in Afghanistan; we have been sending Mujahideen to fight there since 1980, we made an Afghan base camp. Now that the result of our own policies has come to our own backyard, why not think of a better method of reconciliation?”
Meanwhile hundreds of refugees are being forced to cross borders to face an unknown future from a land they fled from for safety.
“This is one of the darkest times in our history,” says Farooq Nasser.