- The governments of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece and the Netherlands have sent letters to EU executive agencies.
- The Belgian Minister of Asylum and Immigration, Sammy Mahdi (Sammy Mahdi) asked the committee to continue Guaranteed that “certain Afghans were forced to return”.
- Mahdi added: “Just because the area of a country is dangerous does not mean that everyone in that country has the right to be protected.”
Officials said on Tuesday that six European Union countries called on the European Commission not to stop the deportation of Afghan immigrants, even though the Taliban is accelerating.
The governments of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece and the Netherlands wrote to EU executive agencies that if their asylum applications fail, they should be allowed to deport Afghan immigrants.
As security forces fought the Taliban offensive before the full withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan on August 31, Afghanistan in July urged the European Union to stop the forced deportation of Afghan immigrants for three months.
The Belgian Minister of Asylum and Immigration, Sammy Mahdi (Sammy Mahdi) said: “In a letter, I asked the committee to work with Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark and Greece to continue to ensure that certain Afghans are forced to return.”
He said on Twitter: “Just because a country’s regions are dangerous, it doesn’t mean that everyone in that country has the right to be protected.”
The Dutch Ministry of Justice also confirmed that it has asked Brussels not to suspend forced deportations, adding that it “is closely monitoring developments in Afghanistan.”
Read also | The Taliban seize two other Afghan provincial capitals in the northern blitz
Danish Immigration Minister Mattias Tesfaye (Mattias Tesfaye) said that he was “happy” that the six countries agreed on this issue.
“It is important for the government to send failed asylum seekers to their own countries,” he said in a statement issued after the letter was originally issued late last week.
However, a senior EU official said that since the Afghan authorities have notified Brussels that Kabul will suspend its forced repatriation operations for three months, it is unlikely to continue.
The official said:
Obviously, given the current situation, I don’t think that forced repatriation will actually happen.
The official said that so far this year, 1,200 people have returned to Afghanistan from the European Union — 1,000 of them were “voluntary” and 200 were “forced”.
After a blitz in northern Afghanistan forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes, the Taliban took control of seven provincial capitals in Afghanistan.
Following the 2001 invasion that overthrew the Taliban after the September 11 attacks, the United States almost left the battlefield before the end of its longest war month.
After Kabul issued an appeal to EU countries on July 11, Sweden and Finland stopped their forced deportations from Afghanistan.
According to EU statistics, Afghans accounted for 10.6% of EU asylum-seekers in 2020, and accounted for only more than 44,000 out of approximately 416,000 applications, second only to Syrians, accounting for 15.2%.
