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The United Arab Emirates, the UAE has temporarily banned the issuance of new visas for citizens of Pakistan, Afghanistan and many other Muslim-majority countries.
According to the news agency Reuters, the UAE has done this for security reasons. However, it has not been told what kind of security concerns there are. Last week, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry also confirmed that the UAE has temporarily banned visas for Pakistanis.
The Pakistani Foreign Ministry had linked it with the corona virus but later questions arose in Pakistan that India is more vulnerable to corona than Pakistan but UAE has not imposed such a restriction for the citizens of India. Pakistan had said that no concrete reason has been given about it from the UAE.
According to documents issued by the UAE, the UAE has temporarily banned the grant of new visas to citizens of 13 countries. Among these, apart from Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, Syria and Somalia are also there. The document related to this was released by the Government Business Park of the UAE, which has come into effect from 18 November.
The document states that applications for new jobs and visas for citizens of 13 countries have been suspended. The countries whose citizens will not get a new visa for UAE right now are Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Kenya, Somalia, Iraq, Lebanon and Tunisia.
In recent times, relations between Pakistan and UAE have historically deteriorated and have been good with India. Pakistan wanted the UAE to support it against India on the Kashmir issue. But both Saudi and UAE did not do so.
In response, Pakistan was close to Turkey and Malaysia. But both UAE and Saudi relations with Turkey and Malaysia are not good. Millions of people of Pakistan work in UAE and this decision will affect people badly.
Recently the UAE had recognized Israel and restored normal diplomatic relations. Protests were held against the UAE in Pakistan. Earlier, on the issue of Kashmir, there was a protest against the UAE.
