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Germany resumes deportations of Afghans despite COVID pandemic
(Last Updated On: December 17, 2020)
About 40 rejected Afghan asylum-seekers arrived in Kabul on Tuesday after being deported from Germany, in a move that has triggered fierce criticism.
Deutsche Welle reported Wednesday that Germany has resumed deportations of rejected asylum-seekers to Afghanistan after suspending flights in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Günter Burkhardt, from Pro Asyl, a refugee organization, has called for the planned deportations to be stopped immediately.
“It is completely irresponsible to go ahead with such plans at a time when the whole country (Germany) goes into a nationwide lockdown,” he told DW.
Coronavirus infection rates in Afghanistan are also high, constituting a threat to the deportees’ safety, the organization stated.
“Violence has increased on a very high level and I call on nations who have taken in Afghan refugees to adhere to international humanitarian and human rights standards when dealing with asylum-seekers,” Sima Samar, minister for human rights in the Kabul government, told DW.
Why the Afghan government agreed to accept the deportees now in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic is unclear.
DW reports that Afghanistan analyst Thomas Ruttig, with the Tony Blair Institute for Global Ideas, suspects the move to resume deportations despite the pandemic is linked to the Afghanistan donors’ conference in November where all participating countries signed a document committing themselves to facilitate the return of rejected Afghan asylum-seekers.
Pro Asyl told DW it has learned that several individuals who had been scheduled for the deportation flight got German courts to halt procedures, pointing to the security situation as well as the pandemic, which would make it impossible for the returnees to be able to earn a living in the war-torn country.
The German Interior Ministry has also confirmed that the Afghan government has demanded all asylum-seekers test negative for the coronavirus before being deported.
Germany is not the only country to resume deportations to Afghanistan. Earlier this week there were also reports of deportation flights from Austria and Bulgaria.