By Saad Sayeed and Mubasher Bukhari
CHAKWAL, Pakistan, May 25 (Reuters) – In a cluster of villages in Pakistan’s largely rural Chakwal district, more than 100 Shi’ite Muslims have returned from the United Arab Emirates without jobs, luggage or access to the savings they spent years building abroad.
They are among potentially thousands of Shi’ites deported from the UAE to Pakistan during the Iran war, raising alarm in Pakistan’s Shi’ite community and prompting Human Rights Watch to investigate.
Reuters reviewed immigration documents, visa-status screenshots and flight details for 103 Pakistanis who said they were deported Shi’ites, interviewing 24 of them. Each interviewee said they were unable to retrieve luggage or savings before being placed on flights alongside dozens of other Shi’ite deportees.
A database compiled by the Pakistani Shi’ite political organisation Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen, seen by Reuters, lists 7,500 Pakistani Shi’ites deported from the Gulf Arab state since February 28, when the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran. Group spokesperson Mohsin Abidi said the actual number was likely far higher.
PAKISTAN’S SHI’ITES SAY DEPORTATIONS HAVE ACCELERATED
Leaders of Pakistan’s Shi’ite community say the deportations have accelerated during the war, which has heightened tensions across the Gulf, particularly as Iran responded by launching missile and drone strikes on the UAE.
Reuters could not determine the criteria the UAE authorities used to select the Pakistanis for deportation.
The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment on a list of questions from Reuters about the deportations.
Pakistan’s interior ministry said in a statement the UAE had not deported anyone based on sect, saying any deportations were for violating UAE regulations. Pakistan’s foreign ministry said “deportation figures remain steady” this year, without providing details.
But a senior Pakistani government official, who asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter, said Islamabad was “reviewing the situation after receiving thousands of Pakistanis deported from UAE”, most of them Shi’ites. He said the Pakistani government had not openly taken up the case for “diplomatic reasons”, without offering details.
Human Rights Watch’s deputy Middle East and North Africa director, Michael Page, said that “reports of UAE deportations of Pakistani Shia residents are deeply alarming” and the group was “investigating these serious allegations”.
About 1.8 million Pakistanis live and work in the UAE, according to the Association of Overseas Pakistanis, accounting for more than $6 billion a year in remittances to Pakistan, which has also been working as a mediator to de-escalate the Iran conflict.
After Iran, Pakistan has the world’s biggest Shi’ite population, at around 40 million, or 17% of Pakistan’s total. The UAE and other Gulf Arab states are Sunni-ruled.
‘BACK TO ZERO’
“The crackdown on Shia Muslims in the UAE is not new,” said Falah Sayed, human rights officer at MENA Rights Group. The Geneva-based NGO has “documented cases of arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance targeting foreign nationals of Shia origin for years”, but recent reports indicate “an escalation in this crackdown”, she said.
Ali Ahmed Naqvi and his wife, Quratul Ain, both Shi’ites, moved to Dubai in 2024 to work in technology. Naqvi said his wife was deported on April 18 after being detained when she applied to change her employment visa with the immigration authorities as she switched jobs.
Naqvi said he was detained when trying to board a flight to return to Pakistan and taken to a UAE facility where he said he met other Shi’ites facing deportation. He said he was put on a flight with 93 other detainees, all of them Shi’ites.
“No one told us why we were being deported,” he said.
In Pakistan’s Kurram district, a predominantly Shi’ite area in the northwest that has endured decades of sectarian violence, community leader Musarat Hussain Bangash said 1,500 people from the region had been sent back from the UAE since the war began, most of whom were supporting extended families.
One is Laiq Hussain, who worked in Dubai for 20 years and managed to buy a cargo van and set up a business. “In just one day, or rather in minutes, everything was over,” Hussain said.
In Chakwal in the central province of Punjab, a 38-year-old former Dubai Metro manager, who said he was deported after 16 years in the emirate, sat with a handful of neighbours.
One who worked in construction said UAE officials asked him about salary and remittances. “Then they asked whether I fund Iran,” said the 41-year-old, who asked not to be named because he hoped to pursue work in another Gulf state.
The metro manager said police took his phones, handcuffed him and, after detaining him for nine days, loaded him onto a darkened, overcrowded bus to the airport.
“I was back to zero in the blink of an eye,” he said.
(Reporting by Saad Sayeed in Chakwal and Mubasher Bukhari in Lahore; Editing by William Mallard)
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