ISLAMABAD: A spokesperson for the Foreign Office on Monday said the repatriation of foreigners living in Pakistan without legal authority was in accordance with the domestic laws and international norms.
FO spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch issued a statement a day before the deadline for the illegal aliens expires.
The statement comes in response to apprehensions expressed by a UN agency that the expulsion of Foreigners, especially Afghan displaced persons, in haste may lead to a humanitarian catastrophe.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) had called on Pakistan to “suspend forcible returns of Afghan nationals before it is too late to avoid a human rights catastrophe”.
The FO spokesperson said the repatriation planned applied to “all illegal foreigners residing in Pakistan, irrespective of their nationality and country of origin”.
“The decision is in exercise of Pakistan’s sovereign domestic laws, and compliant with applicable international norms and principles,” she said.
Meanwhile, interior minister Sarfraz Bugti earlier made it clear that there would be no extension in the deadline set for the undocumented immigrants to leave the country.
He said that after the expiry of the deadline, the illegal foreigners would be picked through data already gathered with the help of geo-fencing and other techniques and kept at designated centres in different cities.
He said the illegal foreigners not leaving the country would then be deported in phases.
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