TAJIKISTAN: UNHCR concerned over forced returns

ANKARA, 19 Sep 2005 (IRIN) - The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has expressed concern over the recent forced return of five members of an Afghan family from Tajikistan.

"It's of course an issue of concern. Forced returns are a violation of the 1951 Convention," Astrid Van Genderen Stort, a spokeswoman for UNHCR said on Monday from Geneva, referring to the international convention related to the status of refugees, of which Tajikistan is a signatory.

The five Afghans - a mother, her three sons and one daughter - had been in the former Soviet republic since 1992 and were given refugee status, along with the father, in 1995, according to UNHCR. In 2004, shortly after the father was deported in equally unclear circumstances, the mother and four children applied for resettlement to a third country. Later, the three adult children (two sons and the daughter) were accepted for resettlement by Canada.

But in early 2005, Tajikistan's Refugee Status Determination Commission ruled to strip the mother of her refugee status, prompting the woman, with assistance from UNHCR, to file an appeal.

That process was still proceeding in the courts when the family, still possessing valid documents issued by the State Migration Services, were abruptly taken from their home in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, and brought to a detention centre by security officers on the night of 12-13 September.

Later, despite repeated requests by UNHCR for access to the family, they were deported across the Amu Darya river to Afghanistan on Wednesday.

Speaking at a press conference shortly afterwards in Geneva, UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond criticised the Tajik government, saying in addition to being denied access to a lawyer while in detention, the family, in accordance with Tajik law, had not been given the opportunity to exercise their right to appeal the deportation decision within one week.

UNHCR highlighted that under Article 19 of the Tajik constitution, everyone was entitled to legal assistance from the time of their arrest, and even if a deportation order was carried out lawfully - which appeared to be in doubt in this case - a person threatened with deportation had the right to appeal the decision, providing they did so within one week.

"UNHCR deplores this refoulement [forced repatriation], which regrettably is not the first," Redmond said, calling it a clear violation of the 1951 Convention and the 1984 Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

But while Stort declined to say how many such incidents of forced returns had taken place in the past, she emphasised: "Every case should be highlighted because it is something that is a violation."

Currently, Tajikistan hosts some 2,500 Afghan refugees, 1,300 of whom have accepted for resettlement by Canada. Most of the largely urban caseload arrived in the country in the early to mid-1990s, after the fall of the Najibullah regime, while a good number came after the Taliban took over.

Meanwhile, the plight of this particular family remains unknown. "A family like this, with two women, could be in an extremely vulnerable position, adrift without support in northern Afghanistan," said Ekber Menemencioglu, UNHCR's Director for Central and South-West Asia, North Africa and the Middle East. "We just hope that, instead, they benefit from their fellow Afghans' hospitality and acute awareness of what it is like to be a refugee. Our offices in that part of Afghanistan have been alerted, but at this point we don't know where they've gone."

[Further information on the plight of Afghan refugees in Tajikistan]

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