Deportations to Afghanistan and the Criminalization of Refugees

War in Afghanistan

The planned deportations from Germany to the Afghanistan will be postponed, due to a carbomb that killed at least 90 people in Kabul on Wednesday morning.  Germany´s minister of internal affairs Thomas de Maiziere said on Wednesday that the deportations were not delayed because of the dangerous situation for the all citizens, but because the German embassy in Kabul was not able to manage the deportations just days after the blast. The people who were supposed to be deported are kept in a detention center until their deportation will take place since it should be rescheduled ‘as soon as possible’. Their detention is enabled by a new German law which allows to put people that are supposed to be deported, including children, behind bars until their departure.

Only after a lot of protests in different cities in Germany and a lot of political and media attention to this topic, the German government decided to delay the deportations for one month until the Embassy is prepared. Also, there are no news about the people who were deported from Sweden and Denmark to Kabul earlier this week, no news about their condition. 

No Deportations

It is inhuman to deport people to a place like Afghanistan now, where there is ‘war everyday’. Deportations to Afghanistan as well as to any other country have to stop. There should be freedom of movement and equal rights for all people to stay on any ground where they want to live, like Harsha Walia wrote ‘for immigration to be a problem, people must live in a propertied relationship to land’ (in ´Undoing Border Imperialis, 2013). Passports should be abolished because they intensify inequality in the world: Guess which passport gives you the greatest freedom of movement? 

2017: The German year of Deportations

Because of the closing of the Balkanroute in March 2016, less people are newly arriving in Germany which allows the BAMF (Federal Office for Migration and Refugees) to work on the existing open asylum applications. It seems like they are trying to process every application really fast, but with which goal? ‘The year of 2017 must be marked by deportations’, Horst Seehofer,  said which was confirmed by de Maiziere in the REPORT MAINZ. At the same time, de Maiziere suggests that especially people who are accused to be criminals should be deported back to Afghanistan. 
In this context we cannot forget that refugees and migrants are being criminalized at all levels:
1. The only possible way to get asylum in the EU is to come illegally because of you have to be on the territory of a country to apply for asylum and there are no ‘legal ways’ to get into the EU.
2. People who are crossing the borders face terrible police violence and silent push backs. 
3. There fingerprints will be collected in the EURODAC database as if they committed a crime.
4. According to the planned Common European Asylum System (CEAS) refugees can be detained during their asylum procedure. 
5. If they don’t get a status, they can be put in prisons for an unknown time, until they will be deported.
Draw your own conclusions and become active against Fortress Europe and the CEAS!