Iran Forcibly Deports 100,000 Afghans

Afghan deportees stand in a line after getting off from buses to across the border from Iran to Afghanistan, in Islam Qala, Herat, Afghanistan, on Wednesday, June 06, 2007. Men, women and children have been swept up in the frenzy and hauled to the Afghan-Iran border post in Islam Qala as Iran cracks down on illegal migrants. About 1,200 to 1,300 deportees, most of them men, file into Islam Qala almost daily. (AP Photo/Farzana Wahidy) (Farzana Wahidy - AP)

"It is not how humans treat other humans. The rooms were full, so they put us in the bathrooms," said Nabiullah Jamshidy, 28, who had been deported after living in Iran for 14 years.

Noor Ahmad Mohammadi, who performs medical checkups at the border, said that in the past month he has seen about seven deportees severely beaten, with broken collarbones, legs, arms and stitches on their faces.

Iranian authorities "are behaving very badly with the deportees," said Naik Mohammad Azamy, head of the UNHCR office in Islam Qala. "Maltreatment is common, and abuses for all of them."

Iran's ambassador to Afghanistan dismissed the allegations as "propaganda and rumors," but said the government would respond to any documented claims.

"We believe there are huge rumors inside Afghanistan because many Afghan refugees don't want to return to their country. They mention many things, but most of them are not reality," Ambassador Mohammad R. Bahrami said.

About 1.5 million illegal migrants live in Iran on top of 950,000 registered Afghan refugees, he said. Some go legally and carry on with their lives after their passports expire, while others pay to be smuggled by human traffickers.

The enormous number of Afghan refugees and undocumented migrants takes a huge chunk out of Iran's subsidized health care and basic infrastructure, Bahrami said.

Iran originally had planned to deport 5,000 illegal migrants per day but scaled that back at Afghan President Hamid Karzai's request. Bahrami said deportations would continue until a "suitable conclusion to our project."

Once back in Afghanistan, deportees receive assistance from U.N. agencies and aid organizations, and move on to larger cities or home. But many have been living in Iran for decades and have nowhere to go.

Hundreds of Afghans, including several families, are living "in the open air" without shelter, UNHCR said.

The deportations have infuriated lawmakers, who last month voted to oust the Repatriation and Refugee Minister Mohammad Akbar Akbar for mishandling the issue.

U.N. and Afghan officials have found that some refugees with documents issued by the Iranian government have suffered the same ordeals as the illegal migrants.

Ahmad, an 18-year-old who was born in Iran and had never set foot in Afghanistan, had heard that illegal migrants were being violently rounded up and deported, but his pink government-issued refugee card meant he was legal.

At a traffic roundabout where day laborers gather, a man in blue jeans and a white button-down shirt offered Ahmad a job making bricks at $1 for 200 bricks. The man led him to a red minibus, and as Ahmad looked at the other Afghans in the vehicle he realized he had been caught.

He was going to show the Iranian police his refugee card, but he said he saw police kicking several detainees and cutting their cards into pieces. He hid his own under his shirt.

At Islam Qala, an Iranian policeman told deportees that anyone with a refugee card would be released, but Ahmad was too scared his would be destroyed.

He crossed the border and stepped into Afghanistan for the first time ever. The UNHCR, which is helping to reunite Ahmad with his family in Tehran, asked that he only be identified by his first name so as not to jeopardize his case.

"I don't want anything from the Iran government. I just want them to send my mother, brother and sisters here to Afghanistan," said Ahmad, whose father died seven years ago. "Even if we die of hunger here, it would be better than me being alone and them being there without me. I'm the head of the family."