More and more rejected asylum-seekers are being sent back to Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria, according to a new report. The German government wants to designate the countries as "safe" in order to accelerate the process.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/H.Schmidt
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Last year saw a 35 percent rise in the number of people deported to the Maghreb states of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, the Rheinische Post daily newspaper reported on Friday, citing the German Interior Ministry.
Germany deported a total of 1,873 rejected asylum-seekers to the northern African countries last year, compared to 1,389 in 2017.
The number of deportations to the region last year was nearly 14 times higher than in 2015, the paper reported.
Morocco saw the most dramatic increase, with the number of deportees rising from 634 to 826.
Last year also saw a jump in deportations to other African countries, including Ghana and The Gambia, according to the ministry data.
Some 422 people were sent back to Russia last year, up from 184 from the previous year. India also saw a big jump in the number of deportations last year, from 32 to 212.
The German government has been pushing for Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria to be added to the list of "safe countries of origin." Berlin argues that doing so would help speed up the asylum application process — as well as deportations.
Their efforts stalled last week when the upper chamber of the German parliament, the Bundesrat, rejected a draft law to add the three countries and Georgia to the list.
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.
