Hollywood actor and rights advocate Angelina Jolie has said that she is “saddened” by the way Pakistan has forced over a million “suffering” Afghan refugees to move to Afghanistan, leaving behind their properties and assets created over decades.
In a post on Instagram, the Oscar winner wrote: “Pakistan has been a supporter for many Afghan refugee families for decades.”
Her post accompanied pictures of Afghan refugees and their families fleeing across border with their meagre belongings.
“I am saddened they would so abruptly push back refugees who face the impossible realities of trying to survive in today’s Afghanistan, where women have again been deprived of all rights and the possibility of education, many are being imprisoned, and there is a deep humanitarian crisis,” she added.
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Jolie called it yet another example of the “backsliding in human rights” globally and a new tragedy in the long history of the suffering of Afghan people - who have experienced nothing but war and conflict and displacement for over forty years.
She said the Afghan refugees were “being abandoned by the world after all the promises that were made of a better future for the Afghan people”.
The ongoing repatriation mission of Afghan nationals residing illegally in the country has reached a milestone, with more than 85,000 crossing the Chaman border into Afghanistan.
The Torkham and Chaman borders have witnessed a steady stream of daily returns, with thousands of Afghans returning. On November 11 alone, 2,957 illegal Afghan refugees left Pakistan. This group comprised 716 men, 691 women, and 1,550 children, constituting 678 families who were repatriated in 278 vehicles.
