By Maryam Shafipour
In recent weeks the Iranian government has unleashed a wave of repression against Afghan migrants and refugees living within its borders. Raids on their homes, mass arrests, and forced expulsions have become commonplace. Authorities have imposed dehumanizing restrictions on Afghans’ access to basic goods like bread, and severely limited their access to schools, health care, and legal protection.
Many Afghan families have been forcibly relocated to overcrowded, unsanitary camps with no meaningful oversight or due process. This brutal campaign deserves attention, but in a world overwhelmed by growing crises, it risks being overlooked.
These collective punishments amount to crimes against humanity. Families are torn from their communities overnight and transported to the border without adequate hearings or legal safeguards. Many hold valid documents or receipts proving their status is being renewed, but they are still forcibly expelled. Inside the so-called “temporary” camps, thousands are crammed together without sufficient food, drinking water, or medical support.
Demonization After the Ceasefire
Following the most recent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, Iranian security authorities and state-affiliated media began to scapegoat Afghan nationals as supposed “Israeli spies,” fueling a dangerous new wave of xenophobia. Propaganda campaigns under slogans like “Deportation of Afghans is a National Demand” have flooded social media and official channels. In doing so, the regime seeks to manufacture an “enemy” to distract from its own deep governance failures.
Iranian officials have gone so far as to grossly exaggerate the Afghan population in Iran — making wild claims of “20 million Afghans,” far beyond any credible estimates — in order to justify repression and stoke fear among Iranians.
Divide and Conquer After Mahsa
In recent years, Iranians of diverse ethnic, linguistic, and religious backgrounds — from Kurds to Baluchis to Arabs and Turks — have forged powerful solidarity during popular uprisings, particularly the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement sparked by the killing of Mahsa Jina Amini. These nationwide protests showed how communities could come together in the face of brutal repression, leaving the authorities with fewer ways to pit one Iranian group against another. As a result, the Iranian regime has employed a tactic of divide and conquer to lessen the power of the movement.
Afghan migrants have become the regime’s new “other”. By dehumanizing and demonizing Afghans, Iran’s rulers hope to shift public anger about poverty, corruption, and violence away from themselves. While propaganda videos showing Afghan families being beaten or forcibly loaded onto trucks are intended to terrify the wider public — a macabre show of force designed to reinforce state authority.
This pattern is tragically familiar. As Salavati, the infamous security judge told me during the Green Movement trials in 2009, “We had to spill innocent blood to keep the pillars of the system strong so it would not collapse.” Today, it is Afghan migrants who are made to bleed in service of those same crumbling pillars.
Taliban Complicity and Abandonment
Meanwhile, Taliban rulers in Afghanistan have shown no serious willingness to defend the rights of their citizens in Iran. Instead, they remain silent or actively cooperate with Iranian authorities, abandoning their own people to illegal deportations, extortion, and violence.
Iran, however, has a clear legal and moral obligation toward these refugees and migrants. Under the 1951 Refugee Convention and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Iran is explicitly prohibited from carrying out collective expulsions or subjecting people to degrading treatment or forced returns to unsafe conditions.
A Call for Solidarity
Turning Afghan migrants into scapegoats for a collapsing political and economic system is not only a violation of their human rights, it also plants seeds of hatred that will sooner or later erupt in wider social violence.
Iranian civil society, having lived through cycles of repression and learned to build cross-community solidarity, must speak out to protect Afghan migrants and refugees from the same fate it has so often endured. The international community, including feminist and rights-based organizations, should amplify these voices and pressure Iranian authorities to halt these crimes.
The courage shown during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement is a reminder: no one is free until we all are. That includes Afghan migrants, who deserve to live with dignity and safety, not as convenient pawns for a regime bent on its own survival at any cost.
Maryam Shafipour is a courageous Iranian human rights defender dedicated to advancing freedom and justice. She has long worked to promote women’s rights and support vulnerable communities, despite facing imprisonment and expulsion from university. Following her release from prison in 2015, she co-founded the “In Support of Imprisoned Mothers” campaign and launched the #FreeNarges campaign, amplifying the voices of Iran’s imprisoned women activists. Now living in Canada, Maryam continues to be a powerful advocate for human rights and equality in Canada.