RASC News Agency: The Freedom Front of Afghanistan has voiced deep concern over the worsening plight of Afghanistani refugees and asylum seekers across the globe, warning that the forced return of these individuals to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan amounts to a serious violation of human rights and international humanitarian standards. In a powerful statement released this week, the Freedom Front emphasized that since the Taliban’s violent takeover in 2021, millions of Afghanistani citizens—fleeing repression, systemic persecution, and the collapse of fundamental freedoms have been forced to leave their homeland. Despite the scale and visibility of this humanitarian crisis, the statement notes that Afghanistani refugees continue to face degrading treatment, arbitrary detention, and involuntary deportations, particularly in neighboring countries and regions where anti-refugee sentiment has grown alarmingly common.
The group condemned these practices as clear violations of international human rights law, and denounced the failure of the international community especially Islamic and regional states—to act with sufficient urgency and compassion. The Freedom Front urged host nations to uphold not only their legal obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention and international customary law, but also their moral and religious duties. The statement stressed that Islamic principles rooted in hospitality, justice, and solidarity with the oppressed demand humane and dignified treatment of all refugees. The group appealed to states to immediately halt all forced deportations, describing such measures as acts of state cruelty that return vulnerable people to a homeland ruled by an illegitimate regime steeped in gender apartheid, ethnic exclusion, and unaccountable violence.
The Freedom Front reiterated that Taliban-controlled Afghanistan remains fundamentally unsafe for any form of repatriation. It cited widespread human rights abuses, targeted violence against non-Pashtun communities, institutionalized discrimination against religious minorities, and the Taliban’s continued criminalization of women’s education and employment. “There is no rule of law, no independent judiciary, no protection for ethnic minorities, and no space for dissent,” the group stated. “Afghanistan, under the Taliban’s medieval and militarized regime, is not a country refugees can return to it is a landscape of fear, erasure, and repression.”
The statement also urged the United Nations and humanitarian actors to dramatically increase their support for Afghanistani refugees by ensuring fair asylum procedures, legal aid, and emergency humanitarian assistance for those at imminent risk of deportation. The Freedom Front concluded by reaffirming its commitment to standing beside the Afghanistani people, both at home and in exile. It called on all governments, humanitarian agencies, and civil society institutions to act with conscience, urgency, and justice in addressing the growing refugee crisis.
“Refugees are not numbers they are victims of war, betrayal, and political abandonment. The world must not turn its back on them while Afghanistan remains under the grip of a regime that has dismantled every democratic institution, silenced every voice of reason, and waged a war on hope itself,” the group declared.
