Asfandyar against forcible return of Afghan refugees

KABUL nationalist leader Asfandyar Wali Khan has said his party, Awami National Party, would oppose forcible return of Afghan refugees and condemned the harassment of Afghans at the hands of police.

Addressing a party gathering commemorating a 1948 massacre of Pashtuns in his hometown of Charsadda, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, on Friday, the ANP leader asked the Pakistan government to review its foreign policy, particularly the Afghan policy.

He said that cordial relations with Afghanistan were in the interest of Pakistan. “Afghans were garlanded when our establishment needed them and after achieving the objectives they were expelled,” Asfanyar maintained.

The Babrra massacre occurred on August 12, 1948, in Charsadda district when workers of the pre-partition Khudai Khid–matgar movement were fired upon by the provincial government on the orders of then chief minister Abdul Qayyum Khan.

Claims regarding deaths in the massacre range from 1,000 to more than 1,300 people while many protestors were injured. The ANP observes August 12 as a black day in memory of the killing of those workers every year.

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