The Afghans, who were recently deported by the Iran government, complained about the harsh and reckless treatment at the hands of Iranian forces. 

Iran has recently ramped up efforts to deport Afghan refugees.  

TOLOnews reporter Waheeda Hassan interviewed some of the refugees who claimed to be deported from Iran by force. The deportees from Iran include women and children.

“The police took us in a vehicle and then brought us to a base. The people were starving and were thirsty and some people were there for one or two months,” said Hayatullah, an Afghan refugee deported by Iran.  

Akbar Khan, who was working as a laborer in Iran, gave an account of rough treatment by Iranian forces with him.

“We were in the prison for four days. They (Iran police) gave us one loaf of bread for six people. There was no medicine for the patients. They were beating us. All the money we had in our pockets, they took it from us,” he said.  

Naqibullah Rasikh, an Afghan refugee rights activist in Iran, said that between 1,000 and 2,000 Afghan refugees who don’t have legal documents are being deported on a daily basis.   

“The refugees living in Iran without any (legal) documents are facing accommodation problems and job problems, these refugees that are being returned to Afghanistan are not satisfied,” he said.  

Officials of transportation companies that are active on the Kabul-Herat highway said that the number of people being deported by Iran has recently increased.  

“Deportation of Afghan refugees by Iran has increased over the last month,” said Naseer Ahmad Arghandiwal, head of a transportation company.  

Meanwhile, Afghan refugees living in Iran are facing various types of other problems as well.  

“Spikes in food materials, spikes in house rent, lack of ID cards and lack of jobs are the problems that the Afghan refugees are struggling with,” said Niamatullah Alokozai, an Afghan refugee in Iran.  

Despite consecutive efforts, TOLOnews was not able to obtain comments on this from the Iranian embassy in Kabul.  

According to the UNHCR, more than 3.4 million Afghan refugees are living in Iran, of whom, at least two million lack legal documents.