A Sikh leader in Afghanistan yesterday said that he was trying to contact families over reports that 35 stowaways found in a shipping container in Britain were from the tiny, persecuted community.
Staff at Tilbury Docks near London discovered one man in his 40s dead and 34 people alive, after hearing banging and screaming from inside the container on Saturday.
British police said the survivors, including 13 children, were Afghan Sikhs.
“I did not know of this until the news reports emerged and I am trying to contact families who may be involved,” Hindu and Sikh Council of Afghanistan vice president Rawel Singh told reporters. “I am urgently seeking more information.”
Singh said just a few thousand Sikhs remained in Afghanistan, a sharp drop from before the civil war in the 1990s.
Many of those remaining complain of brutal persecution in a Muslim-majority country that has been ravaged by decades of war.
“Our rights are trampled and we are treated badly by Afghans,” Singh said. “We are discriminated against, our children cannot attend school and our land has been stolen. Therefore many Sikhs are forced to flee Afghanistan.”
Afghan’s Sikhs and Hindus often live in the same communities in Kabul, working as laborers or in the clothing and traditional medicine businesses, Singh said.
He said most Sikhs who had recently left Afghanistan headed for Australia and Russia.
All 34 survivors from the shipping container were taken to nearby hospitals to be treated for hypothermia and dehydration.
Four people remain hospitalized and the Sikh community in the UK has been helping care for the survivors.
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