Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie has said that Pakistan’s decision to expel Afghan refugees has “saddened” and lamented that immigrants were again “abandoned” by the world.
“Pakistan has been a supporter for many Afghan refugee families for decades,” Jolie said in a post on Instagram on Monday.
“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.”
According to her post, as many as 1.4 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan were facing deportation. The country’s decision comes after cross-border attacks and terrorist incidents. The authorities have claimed that Afghan nationals were found in many terrorist activities in Pakistan.
Thousands of Afghans have left Pakistan since October 2023 when the government asked the illegal immigrants to leave Pakistan by November 1. Many have been arrested and kept at temporary holding centres to send them back.
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Pakistan has brushed off calls from the United Nations, rights groups, and Western embassies to think again about expelling more than a million of 4 million Afghans from the country.
Jolie has dedicated over 20 years of service to the UN Refugee Agency. She served as a Goodwill Ambassador from 2001-2012 and then as a special envoy from 2012-2022.
Jolie added that the deportation of Afghan refugees was “yet another example of the backsliding in human rights globally,” describing it as a “new tragedy” for the people of Afghanistan.
“People who have experienced nothing but war and conflict and displacement for over forty years, and are being abandoned by the world after all the promises that were made of a better future for the Afghan people,” she added.
