Human rights teams file the petition amid an ongoing crackdown on undocumented foreigners within the nation.

Pakistan’s Supreme Court docket has opened a listening to on a petition filed by human rights teams to cease the deportations of Afghans who had been born in Pakistan and people who can be in danger in the event that they had been returned to Afghanistan.

Greater than 370,000 Afghans have fled Pakistan since October 1 after Pakistan mentioned it might expel greater than one million undocumented refugees and migrants, principally Afghans, amid a row with Kabul over fees that it harbours anti-Pakistan armed teams.

Pakistan mentioned most Afghans have left voluntarily, a declare rejected by Kabul, which has referred to as the Pakistani motion “unilateral” and “humiliating”.

“As a result of urgency, as hundreds of persons are struggling on every day foundation, I’ve requested the court docket to take up the case as early as subsequent week,” Umar Ijaz Gilani, the lawyer representing the rights activists, mentioned on Friday.

1000’s of undocumented Afghans have gone underground in Pakistan to keep away from deportation, fearing for his or her lives in the event that they return to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan following a hasty and chaotic withdrawal of United States-led Western forces in 2021.

Pakistan has lengthy hosted about 1.7 million Afghans, most of whom fled the nation throughout the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation. As well as, greater than half one million individuals fled Afghanistan when the Taliban seized energy in August 2021 within the ultimate weeks of a US and NATO pull-out.

Human rights activists, United Nations officers and others have denounced Pakistan’s coverage and urged Islamabad to rethink.

The petition got here a day after an official in Balochistan introduced that the southwestern province is setting a goal of 10,000 Afghans who’re within the nation illegally for police to arrest and deport daily.

Gilani argued earlier than the Supreme Court docket that the interim authorities in Pakistan doesn’t have the authority to introduce such main coverage shifts. The federal government is in place till February’s elections, and underneath Pakistani legislation, it solely handles day-to-day issues of state.

The court docket afterward Friday requested the federal government for a response and adjourned the listening to till subsequent week.

On the centre of deteriorating relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan is Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a banned armed group additionally known as the Pakistani Taliban for its ideological proximity to the Taliban rulers in Afghanistan. The group has been accused of lots of of lethal assaults after it ended a ceasefire settlement with the Pakistani authorities a yr in the past.

Pakistan mentioned its crackdown won’t have an effect on the estimated 1.4 million Afghans registered as refugees and residing in numerous elements of Pakistan. Lots of them have through the years left refugee camps for all times in rural or city areas.

The petition is unlikely to have any impression on the crackdown, mentioned Mahmood Shah, a safety analyst in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan.

“Allow us to see how the federal government facet convinces the Supreme Court docket about this matter,” he mentioned.