They wouldn't let us stay there anymore. They kicked us to the borders.
They wouldn't let us stay.
We're here at Islam Qala, the border between Iran and Afghanistan
and this is the border where hundreds and sometimes even a thousand
Afghans a day are deported from Iran. People are picked up sometimes on the street
sometimes at their place of work and within
two or three days they're back in Afghanistan.
In the past ten or fifteen years there has been an increasing pressure
on all Afghans, whether they're recognised refugees
or undocumented migrants, to leave Iran and given that there are about three
plus million Afghans in Iran,
they're trying to find ways to push these Afghans out.
We've met young people deported without their parents,
husbands deported without their wives. A huge proportion of the deportees are in fact
children.
They're boys who have been sent on their own. Typically they're the oldest boy in the
family,
but when I say oldest I don't mean old, because we've interviewed boys as young as 13
who have been sent by their families to Iran to try and work.
We were poor in Afghanistan. That's why I went to Iran, to work and help my parents.
The reason people are going to Iran
in huge numbers is usually a combination of insecurity and economic desperation.
We went to Iran to find work and put food on the table.
But they arrested us and beat us up.
We were out here a year ago talking with people in the same situation
I think we've seen but a big change for the worse. Something new that we're
hearing this time is about police coming and actually
raiding people's houses, and that indicates that there's been an even further
crackdown by the Iranian government.
I was asleep. At 1 or 2 a.m. they
stormed our home. They didn't even ask if we had refugee identity cards.
They broke our locks and took my my wife and children to the police station.
The didn't show us any mercy.
They held me at gunpoint and didnt even let me speak. Life for undocumented migrants in Iran
is very difficult.
They're being pushed out of more and more of the country.
There are these areas call no-go areas, which are areas where foreigners are banned.
So, Afghans are banned from living in more than half of Iran's
provinces and residency restrictions apply in several others.
If an Afghan is is caught by security forces, by the police,
in these ever-expanding no go areas
it is very possible that they will be swiftly deported and sent back to
Afghanistan.
The deportation process itself is a brutal process.
They're forced to actually pay for deportation, so any money that they have
will be taken from them
and used to it to pay for transportation, to pay for
for the time in the camps, the food that they ate...
They took our money and
stripped us down to our underwear. At the camp, they asked us again
for deportation money.
I told them I'd been robbed,
but they made me collect the money
from other deportees in the camp.
That's how I got here.
And there's also some physical violence that quite a few people
experience in the camps
beatings and slappings and punchings by guards.
They kicked and punched us.
I can't hear out of this ear anymore.
There were three or four of them punching.
They put us in this room,
may you never experience it, would only be fit for sheep and cows.
The officer came, beat us up
and took us to another camp.
No Afghan should have to endure abuses in detention facilities,
whether it's physical abuse or verbal abuse, and
no Afghan should have to pay for their way back to Afghanistan
or be held in detention facilities for days if they're not able to pay their
way.
Iran's policies are not complying with their obligations under international
law.
Essentially, Afghans arriving in Iran these days have no opportunity
to seek refugee status and Afghans who are being deported from Iran have no
opportunity to claim asylum
and everyone should be afforded this right.