Source: nation.com.pk

Detainees are mostly Ahmadiyya but also include Christians and Shia Muslims.

NEW YORK – Human Rights Watch (HRW), a prominent watchdog body, has urged Sri Lanka not to deport some 142 members of Pakistani minority groups until the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has had full access to them and determined their need for international protection. Most are members of the Ahmadiyya minority, though the detainees also include Christians and Shia Muslims, the New York-based rights group said in a news release. UNHCR, it said, has not had access to the detainees, who are being held in the Boosa detention center, although the UN refugee agency had already recognised at least six of the group as refugees.

Media reports cited Immigration Controller Chulananda Perera as stating that the government was able to deport the detained Pakistanis because it had not given them permission to register asylum claims.

“Sri Lankan authorities are threatening Pakistani minority group members with deportation at the very time when persecution of these groups is escalating in Pakistan,” Bill Frelick, HRW’s Refugees Director, said in a statement. “Preventing asylum seekers from lodging claims in no way absolves Sri Lanka from its duty not to return them to possible persecution.” The sweeps of Pakistani minority neighborhoods in Negombo, a City on the western coast of Sri Lanka, began on June 9, with authorities citing security concerns for the sweep. Negombo has been a haven for minority refugees from Pakistan.

In 2013, UNHCR registered nearly 1,500 refugee claims of Pakistanis in Sri Lanka.

The Pakistani government has failed to investigate instances of discrimination or violence against ethnic and religious minorities, HRW said. Members of the Ahmaddiya, Christian, and other religious minority communities are at acute risk of violent persecution and discrimination in Pakistan, it said.
Both Human Rights Watch and the Asian Human Rights Commission have… read more at nation.com.pk