Report: 15,000 Pakistanis arrested and deported from UAE, savings seized
New Lines Magazine reported that authorities in the United Arab Emirates have detained and deported up to 15,000 Pakistani workers, many of them Shia Muslims, without formal charges.
The report said the actions followed a pattern of arrests, phone confiscations, transfers between detention sites and deportation flights to Pakistan.
The workers were sent back "without being given the opportunity to withdraw their funds" from banks, the report cited a Shia cleric as saying.
Many of those expelled had spent decades working in the UAE, where migrant remittances remain a critical source of income for families and foreign exchange for Pakistan.
Pakistani window cleaners work on the facade of a building in the Gulf emirate of Dubai on 6 September 2014. (Rene Slama / AFP)