Deportations from Germany have resumed after a lengthy moratorium. Protestors noted the recent spate of violence in Kabul, criticizing the government's decision to list Afghanistan as a safe country of origin.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/H. Schmidt
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About 150 people gathered at Leipzig's airport in the eastern German state of Saxony on Tuesday to protest the deportation of an unknown number of people from Afghanistan whose asylum applications had been rejected.
"I don't know who is sitting in that airplane," said Left party politician Juliane Nagel, "but even prisoners shouldn't be exposed to dangers."
In July, the Federal Foreign Office declared that in some cases, Afghanistan could be considered a safe country of origin.
"Taking into account the circumstances of each individual case," the office said in a statement, "deportation to certain regions is responsible and possible."
However, in just the past few weeks, a series of attacks in the capital Kabul killed about 250 civilians and security forces.
Saxony's Interior Minister Markus Ulbig was adamant that the deportations were a necessary step. Ulbig, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), told German press agency DPA that "anyone who has been found to have no right to remain here after completing an asylum procedure and going through all the proper government channels must leave our country."
Over the northern hemisphere summer, deportations to Afghanistan resumed after a long moratorium put in place in the wake of a December 2016 attack in Kabul that left 150 people dead near the German embassy.
Deportations from Germany to Afghanistan
Mid-December 2016 saw the first collective deportation of 34 rejected Afghan asylum seekers from Germany to Kabul – the first of many. Germany halted the flights in late May 2017, but has now restarted them.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Balk
By the planeload
On September 12, 2017, a flight left Germany's Düsseldorf airport for Afghanistan, carrying 15 rejected asylum seekers in what is the first group deportation to the country since a deadly car bomb blast near the German embassy in Kabul in late May. The opposition Greens and Left party slammed the resumption of deportations to Afghanistan as "cynical."
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/B. Roessler
Fighting for a chance
In March 2017, high school students in Cottbus made headlines with a campaign to save three Afghan classmates from deportation. They demonstrated, collected signatures for a petition and raised money for an attorney to contest the teens' asylum rejections - safe in the knowledge that their friends, among them Wali (above), can not be deported as long as proceedings continue.
Image: DW/S.Petersmann
'Kabul is not safe'
"Headed toward deadly peril," this sign reads at a demonstration in Munich airport in February. Protesters often show up at German airports where the deportations take place. Several collective deportations left Germany in December 2016, and between January and May 2017. Protesters believe that Afghanistan is too dangerous for refugees to return.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Balk
From Würzburg to Kabul
Badam Haidari, in his mid-30s, spent seven years in Germany before he was deported to Afghanistan in January 2017. He had previously worked for USAID in Afghanistan and fled the Taliban, whom he still fears years later – hoping that he will be able to return to Germany after all.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/C.F. Röhrs
Persecuted minorities
In January of the same year, officials deported Afghan Hindu Samir Narang from Hamburg, where he had lived with his family for four years. Afghanistan, the young man told German public radio, "is not safe." Minorities from Afghanistan who return because asylum is denied face religious persecution in the Muslim country. Deportation to Afghanistan is "life-threatening" to Samir, says change.org.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/H. Wiedl
Reluctant returnees
Rejected asylum seekers deported from Germany to Kabul, with 20 euros in their pockets from the German authorities to tide them over at the start, can turn to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) for assistance. Funded by the German Foreign Office, members of the IPSO international psychosocial organization counsel the returnees.
