PARIS: Amnesty International and UN special rapporteurs on Thursday called for a transparent probe into reports that Iranian security forces had killed and wounded dozens of Afghan migrants seeking to cross into Iran from Pakistan.
Iran hosts one of the largest refugee populations in the world, mostly Afghans who fled strife in their home country in the last decades, but the flow of Afghan immigrants has increased since the Taliban took over in August 2021.
According to local news reports and rights groups, Iranian security forces opened fire on a group of Afghans seeking to cross over the border from Pakistan into the Saravan district of Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan on Sunday evening.
There have been no reports of the incident in official Iranian media. Videos posted on social media have shown images of bloodied corpses of young men in traditional clothing strewn across the road.
The Baluch rights group Haalvsh said that 300 people had attempted to cross and as many as 260 were killed. It was not immediately possible to verify this figure.
“A prompt, transparent, independent and effective investigation must be carried out into the use of unlawful lethal force, violating the right to life of Afghans,” Amnesty International said, describing the report as “horrifying”.
The UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, wrote on X he was “seriously concerned” about the reports and urged authorities to “investigate transparently”.
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