Refugee – Afghan Human Rights Home

Ashraf Ghani is part of our shame!

December 4, 2015December 4, 2015Posted in Force Displacement, Human Rights News, Refugee, Women RightsLeave a comment

Full video interview is here at DW.DE News

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani says women’s rights are a priority commitment. But how is he planning on ensuring them and how will he fight corruption, security threats and human rights violations in his country?

2015 has been a tough year for Afghanistan. In the first eight months alone, the country saw a spike in the number of civilian casualties and 120,000 Afghans fleeing the country to seek asylum abroad,accordingto the United Nations.

In an exclusive interview with DW, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani described the year of 2015 as “one of the most difficult years, if not even the most difficult year of the last 15 years.”

When asked if things could get worse, the president said it depends on how much regional cooperation Afghanistan could achieve. Ghani said cooperation with neighboring Paksitan was also crucial.

“Sovereignty of Afghanistan must be accepted categorically by Pakistan so that we can move forward.”

Women’s rights a top priority

According to Ghani, women’s rights are a top priority for him. “As long as I am president, the rights of women will be protected,” he said.

When confronted with a photograph published by Human Rights Watch showing a 22-year-old Afghan woman who was sentenced to 100 lashes after being accused of sex outside marriage, Ghani held up the photo and said:

“This is part of our shame. We have inherited situations that are shameful, that are absolutely despicable.”

Government-affiliated militia groups violate human rights

Abuse of women isn’t the only problem Afghanistan is facing. According to a report by the United Nations from August 2015, local and national militia groups carried out deliberate killings, assaults, extortion, intimidation and property theft with the backing of the government.

But Ghani rejected these accusations in the interview, saying: “We don’t have militias.”

The 65-year-old president, who assumed office in September 2014, then admitted that local police behaved like militias prior to his inauguration, saying the government has “taken systematic measures” to deal with the issue and to remove the powerful political protection these groups have had in the first six months of 2015.

Ashraf Ghani im Interview für DW — It’s part of our shame !

“This is our shame,” Ghani said, holding up a picture of an Afghan woman being lashed

“We’ve had a difficult legacy of 40 years, and cleaning up is not going to be a one day job. But we are engaged in a systematic effort, we have not allowed formation of new militia groups, and we are reforming the local police systematically so that there won’t be abuse,” Ghani said.

Dealing with impunity and corruption

Reforming local police also means dealing with corruption, Ghani added in the interview.

“The Kabul Bank case that became the emblem of impunity has been dealt with. We’ve already collected 450 million dollars out of the 800 million dollars that was stolen from the public purse.”

But just one month ago, the former CEO of Kabul Bank, Khalilullah Frozi, who was supposed to be serving a 15 years sentence for fraud, was released from prison and seen smiling with government officials.

Ghani said he was shocked to see the man free. “My shock didn’t turn into anger, but into action. And it sent a very strong signal that I will not tolerate it. (…) He’s back in prison, in solitary confinement and under close attention.”

“We’ve had a difficult legacy for 40 years and cleaning up is not going to be a one day job,” Ghani told Tim Sebastian

Afghanistan’s president added that he’s also dismissed the officials that were involved in the scandal and has ordered a full inquiry to deal with the case.

Economic instability and global threats

Since Ghani was elected, polls show many Afghans losing confidence in where their country is headed. According to a poll conducted by the Asia Foundation, 54 percent of those surveyed in 2014 thought the country was going in the right direction. This year that figure dropped to just 36 percent.

Ghani explains this loss of confidence from his people with the economic challenges Afghanistan is facing.

“We’ve had to deal with an economic transition cost by the departure of over 600,000 troops and contractors that were the most important consumers and spenders in the country. We’ve had to impose an austerity program because the promises of the Afghan government to the national community were not credible.”

Urging Afghanistan’s elite to make the most of opportunities at home

What doesn’t help Afghanistan’s economy is the fact that the families of elite leaders often live abroad, such as the families of Ghani’s vice presidents, who live in Turkey and Iran, and the family of Ghani’s chief executive, who lives in India. In fact, the families of the top cabinet ministers, presidential advisers and deputy ministers all live outside of the country.

In the interview with DW, Ghani urged Afghanistan’s elite to make the most of opportunities at home rather than moving abroad.

According to German authorities, some 31,000 Afghans arrived this year through October

“The privileged elites are part of the globalization moment that we live in. What is significant is to create opportunities for the generations to come. If the families of the privileged live abroad they are not going to have careers abroad. Their careers are back in Afghanistan. (…) If they live abroad they become dishwashers. They don’t become part of the middle class.”

Ghani himself, however, did rather well when living abroad in the United States, completing a doctorate in anthropology and becoming a professor at Johns Hopkins University before returning to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban.

Confronted with this fact, Ghani said: “The minute opportunity was created in 2001 I returned. I hope that the new generation of our friends will have the same sense of patriotism and respond to the conditions of our country.”

The president said he was hopeful the Afghan people would succeed in dealing with the numerous issues the country is facing.

“We are a free society, we engage in debate, and that is our characteristic.” Ghani said. “Our job is to heal and to move forward. Not to perpetuate, not to get poked down.”

Refugee crisis: The 105-year-old Afghan woman struggling to find asylum in Europe

November 1, 2015November 1, 2015Posted in Force Displacement, RefugeeLeave a comment

Bibhali Uzbeki has spent a large amount of her journey from Afghanistan on the back of her 67-year-old son!

Bibihal Uzbeki, 105, from Kunduz, Afghanistan, rests in Croatia's main refugee camp at Opatovac, Croatia, near the border with Serbia AP — Bibihal Uzbeki, 105, from Kunduz, Afghanistan, rests in Croatia’s main refugee camp at Opatovac, Croatia, near the border with Serbia AP

There are few refugees as remarkable as Bibihal Uzbeki. The 105-year-old woman has made an arduous journey to Europe in search of a better life, often carried on the back of her 67-year-old son and her teenage grandson due to her fragile health.

“We had problems many times. I suffered a lot,” she told a reporter from the Associated Press in Croatia. “I fell and injured my head. I have scars on my head.”

However, Uzbeki’s path to a new life in Europe is going to face a serious complication: She’s from Afghanistan.

Uzbeki and her family are just a small part of an enormous movement of people from Afghanistan who have fled to Europe this year, most of whom have traveled via Turkey and onwards on what has been called the “Black Route.” Afghans make up about 20 percent of the 560,000-plus arrivals by sea that Greece has seen in 2015, second only to Syrians fleeing their country’s civil war. There are more than three times as many Afghans asylum-seekers as from the next-largest group, Iraqis.

While the majority of Syrians and Iraqis are accepted as refugees in Europe, would-be refugees from Afghanistan face a more unpredictable response from European authorities. In a recently released report, the European Asylum Support Office, a European Union agency designed to help coordinate asylum practices, had found that Afghan asylum seekers faced a wide variation in rates of acceptance across member states.

Even Germany, with its reputation for openness to refugees, has a complicated stance on Afghans. On Wednesday, Germany announced that Afghans who apply for asylum in the country would most likely be sent back home. The number of Afghans coming to Europe had created an “unacceptable” situation, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told reporters, adding that many were members of the middle class who “should remain and help build the country up.”

While Germany had allowed failed Afghan asylum seekers to remain in the country in the past, officials now favor deportation. According to a report published Sunday in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany has called on the European Commission to help negotiate a readmission agreement with Afghanistan that would allow more of the asylum seekers to be sent back to their homeland. The newspaper wrote that the Interior Ministry no longer felt that the situation in Afghanistan was similar to that of Syria, and that Afghans could be deported back to Kabul or other safe areas of the country.

“Many European governments increasingly argue that if a person is only likely to face serious harm in one part of the country, then they should move to a safe part of that country rather than seek asylum,” Alexander Betts, director of the Refugee Studies Center at Oxford University, says. “It is a very worrying practice with implications for many Afghans.”

Afghanistan’s refugee crisis has been around a long time. You can trace its roots to the 1980s, when about 5 million Afghans fled a war that broke out with the Soviet invasion. Most headed to neighboring Pakistan and Iran. It was only after 2002 that these refugees began to head home, but many found that return difficult. Some ended up internally displaced, others elected to leave the country again.

Liza Schuster, a sociologist from City University in London who studies Afghan asylum seekers, says that over the past year, there has been a growing sense in Afghanistan that things are never going to get better. She points to disappointment in the economy since the election of President Ashraf Ghani last September and a growing feeling of danger due to a continued Taliban insurgency and a new Islamic State one.

“The feeling is that after 15 years, very little progress has been made,” Schuster says. “It doesn’t matter that in reality some progress has been made. The feeling is that we’re slipping backward fast. Hope is shriveling up.”

Afghan refugees in Pakistan are also part of the new surge of Afghans trying to reach Europe. Many are concerned that Pakistan’s limited tolerance of their communities is coming to an end, and they are willing to risk a journey to Europe rather than a return to a chaotic and troubled Afghanistan. Some are of the Hazara Shia minority who have legitimate concerns about violence from the Taliban.

Despite the very real problems Afghans faces at home, over the past year, their plight has been overshadowed by the situations in a number of other countries.

In a meeting with Washington Post editors this week, Antonio Guterres, the United Nations high commissioner for Refugees, said that while Syrians, Iraqis and Eritreans would be included in a new program being established by the European Union to process asylum-seekers landing in Greece, Afghans would face a “more complex situation” and would not be automatically assumed to have legitimate asylum claims.

According to Betts, part of the problem is that Afghans represent an uncomfortable grey area for Europe. While many do not meet the full definition of a refugee, they are not really economic migrants either. “We collectively lack an institutional framework to respond to the needs of people who flee fragile states such as Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen but who are not refugees,” Betts says.

While some Afghan leaders have pleaded for refugees to stay in the country, warning of a potential “brain drain,” others have expressed sympathy for their plight and asked Western states to be more accepting. In an interview with Deutsche Welle, Afghan Minister of Refugees and Repatriations Sayed Hussian Alimi Balkhi said that the security situation in Afghanistan was getting worse and that he had been urging E.U. states to take in more Afghan refugees and stop deporting failed asylum seekers.

The complicated situation may create big problems for would-be Afghan refugees in the future. The Uzbeki family are hoping to make it to Sweden, a country that has deported Afghans – against the Afghan government’s wishes – very recently. Each asylum case is judged on its own merits, however, and Bibihal Uzbeki’s age may well help her case. “Anything is possible,” Schuster says.

Source: Independent

Turkish limbo to Afghan Refugees

April 28, 2014April 28, 2014Posted in RefugeeTagged Turkish limbo and Afghan Refugees, UNHCR does not give refugee status to AfghansLeave a comment

ISTANBUL – Refugees and Afghan asylum seekers is faced to big discrimination question into Turkish limbo and arms of smugglers.

Turkey and UNHCR does not give refugee status to anybody from Afghanistan or outside Europe, in last few days a lot of people from around Turkey protest against discrimination and deafen policy, Asylum seekers said.

The situation arose as far back as 1951, when it opted for a “geographical limitation” in its adoption of a UN refugee convention, which reserves the status only for “persons who have become refugees as a result of events occurring in Europe.”

Even if the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, takes somebody under their wing, when they get to Turkey they have to pay for their own temporary residence.

Prices hover at around 400 Turkish liras (€171), to be paid every six months – a fortune if you come from an Asian warzone.

They are housed in one of 52 “satellite” cities, located primarily in rural zones, where they sometimes languish for years with few prospects of ever getting Turkish citizenship EU observer investigation team highlighted.

It’s around three weeks, afghan hunger strike and protested for achieving to the basic rights, as refugees who were attacked by Turkish riot police last night on26th April 2014.

Afghan refugees had peaceful sit-in front of Ankara UNHCR office for their basic demands where Turkish riot police attacked, report says women and children are among the protesters and several defenseless and oppressed Afghan refugees were strongly injured.

Afghan refugees asking for taking action by UNHCR to respond them clearly for their suspension cases as soon with no crooked nose and disregard.

Turkey and United Nations (States) violated Geneva Convention “1951” by this embarrassing attack by riot police, the UNHCR office must take action to answer the refugees logically, their situation and explain them new approvals …

This attack and Afghan predicament is obvious negligence by UNHCR and UN should take serous what is happening in Turkey.

According to investigation, if you want to leave your town, even for a short visit to somewhere else, you need police permission. If you do not have it and you get caught, you are an “escapee” and you might go to prison.

Those lucky enough to get out of Turkey go mainly to the US, Canada or Australia – the three countries took in almost 7,000 UNHCR-recognized refugees out of 17,000 UNHCR applicants in Turkey last year.

Very few end up in the EU legally, as member states do not want resettled refugees from Turkey.

France, for example, accepted 14 people in 2010, for the first time since 2000.

“The majority [of legally resettled people] are Iraqis and Iranians, who are much easier to resettle because the policy of main resettlement countries prioritizes these nationalities and not the Afghans,” said Ana Fontal of the Brussels-based European Council of Refugees and Exiles.

At the same time, the number of Afghan people fleeing conflict and poverty in Turkey is mushrooming.

“Many of the Afghans are actually from Iran who are also there in an illegal situation. A lot of the Afghan people from Iran are mainly coming for economic reasons,” a source working on migrant issues in Istanbul, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of their work, told this website.

The UNHCR noted that Iran kicked out over 190,000 unregistered Afghan nationals between January and September.

It cited EU economic sanctions as one reason. It also dubbed them a threat to national security.

The Helsinki Citizens Assembly Turkey, an NGO based in Istanbul, estimates that the number of asylum applications in Turkey will soar due to the new Afghan diaspora.

EU Observer report highlighted, Smugglers offer hope

Faced with no prospect of normalisation of their status in Turkey or of being resettled in Europe or further afield, many Afghans end up in Istanbul’s Zeytinburnu neighborhood, where long-established people smuggling groups tempt them with the promise of a better life elsewhere.

Those who take up the offer used to try to get into Greece by crossing the Evros river on the Greek-Turkish border.

The river used to see up to 300 illegal crossings a day.

Some people used to sneak over the river-free land border and queue at the police station in the Greek town of Orestiada, because authorities at the time were handing out 30-day residency passes and then letting them roam about in the country.

But new initiatives – a surge in the number of guards, a wall, a tough detention policy for people who get caught – has seen detected crossings at the land border fall by more than 90 percent.

An Afghan national – speaking on condition of anonymity – who works with migrant smugglers in Zeytinburnu told this website more and more people now target Bulgaria or go further south through the Greek islands to reach mainland Europe.

If they get people into Bulgaria, the smugglers channel them to Montenegro, Bosnia (the border towns of Foca, Cajnice and Gacko) and then into Croatia.

“The flow coming in from Turkey and Greece and then up is just growing,” says Gianluca Rocco, who heads the Bosnia office of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

New routes opening up

For their part, Bulgarian authorities say the number of migrants detected entering the country from Turkey doubled in October and November of 2012, prompting it to increase patrols.

Most were either Afghan or Syrian refugees.

Bosnian authorities have also registered a “remarkable increase” in the number of irregular migrants coming via Montenegro.

Another route is Bulgaria-Macedonia-Serbia, where the terrain is flatter and easier to cross.

Once in Serbia, people take taxis or buses and cross directly into the EU.

“In the old days, 10 years ago we were used to seeing minivans of people from Eastern Europe. Now you see people catching buses and taking taxis and these are people from Afghanistan,” the IOM’s Rocco said.

EU Observer and CNN Report

Migrants saved in Greek boat accident mourn relatives – and dispute claims

January 28, 2014January 28, 2014Posted in RefugeeLeave a comment

Survivors say coastguards refused to help them as vessel sank and stamped on hands of those clinging to Greek boat.

Grace refugees — Fadi Mohamed, an Afghan who lost his family when the boat sank, describes seeing coastguards kicking a refugee. Photo: Ali Mehrjoey from Grace

Even now, eight days later, they can both still taste the sea. Just as they can still feel the water slipping through their fingers as they desperately tried to bail out the boat.

And the cries: “help me, help me, help me,” the only words the Afghan and Syrian migrants knew how to say as the vessel went down. “We were so afraid,” said Abdul Sabur Azizi, recalling the moments before he lost his wife and 10-year-old son to the sea.

“At some point we took the babies and held them up high, above our heads, to show that there were children on board,” the 30-year-old murmured, his eyes fixed firmly on the floor. “The Greek coastguard didn’t care. They had guns, they were shooting in the air. We told them the boat had broken down, its engine didn’t work but all they wanted was to take us back to Turkey.”

And that, he says, is when the Greek officials got the rope, tied it to the bow of the ship and began towing it “so fast that the boat began bouncing this way and that, like a snake, across the water.”

It didn’t last long – maybe 10 minutes at most. “The waters were very calm but we were going so fast, we were flying high,” said Ehsanula Safi, his Afghan compatriot still too visibly distressed to make mention of his dead wife and four children. “When the rope snapped the first time it made a hole in the side of the boat. The hole got bigger and bigger, and as the water gushed in we tried to get it out, first with a bucket and then with our hands.”

Eleven are believed to have died when the boat capsized. Only two bodies have been found. Of those missing, eight were under the age of 12. Of the 16 who survived all were men, with the single exception of one woman and a baby.

The events surrounding the sinking of the ship in the Aegean last week have not only triggered outrage, both in and outside Greece, but highlighted the increasingly controversial methods being used to stop immigrants from entering the EU.

Ehsanula Safi, an Afghan migrant, describes how he lost five relatives off Farmakonisi. Photograph: Nikolas Georgiou/Demotix/Corbis

While Athens has denied allegations that the boat was being towed to Turkey – arguing that radar records show it was being tugged to the Greek island of Farmakonisi when the tragedy occurred – refugees insist they were the victims of an illegal “push-back” operation of the kind frequently indulged in by authorities to keep human cargo at bay.

More than 150 migrants, the majority of them asylum seekers from Syria, have perished in “push backs” – a policy pursued since traffickers began taking the treacherous sea route from the Turkish coast to the Greek isles following the construction of a metal barrier along the land border that divides the two neighbours.

“There was a lot of pushing, a lot of kicking,” said Azizi with a wince. “Most of those who died were in the hold. Those of us who fell in the sea tried to hang on to the coastguard vessel for dear life but they didn’t want us to. They were stomping on our hands with their shoes.”

The conservative-dominated coalition of the Greek prime minister, Antonis Samaras, has ordered an investigation. But as the controversy has intensified so has the language. Last week, the EU commissioner for human rights, Nils Muižnieks, said the incident bore all the hallmarks of a failed collective expulsion. “The Greek government has pledged to put an end to the illegal practice,” he railed. “I urge them to implement their promise.”

As anti-racist groups took to the streets, Athens’ shipping minister, Miltiades Varvitsiotis, countered that Muižnieks was trying to create a political issue out of the tragedy. Moreover, he claimed, survivors had changed their accounts of the incident.

“A father who lost his companion and their four children states clearly that the coastguard ‘saved us,'” said the politician, adding that the sudden change was “striking and curious”.

Seated in the migrant centre where he has

agreed to speak, Safi, the man in question, shakes his head in disbelief. At 39, he has lost everything. “Nothing makes sense,” he sobbed. “All I had wanted to do was get to Europe. Now we don’t want anything: asylum, protection, bread, a home. All we want is the bodies of those we love. And justice for those who did this to us.”

Source the Guardian

‘Afghan family’ among those deported from Sweden ..

December 11, 2013December 23, 2013Posted in Force Displacement, RefugeeTagged Afghan refugee family deported from Europe, Afghan refugees, Sweden deported many afghan asylum seekersLeave a comment

Writen by Abdul Ghafoor

around 20 Afghan refugees deported from Sweden arrived at Kabul international Airport today. This is the 4th Mass deportation from Sweden in the past few months. However there have not been many cases were families are deported. But this deportations includes a family of 5 with 3 children .
In a telephonic interviews with Reza’ head of the family who was deported from Sweden yesterday’ confirmed that they were around 20 people but he still didn’t know the exact number of people deported with him in the plane. Reza and the family now lives in Afghan refugee receiving center Jangalak. They are accompanied with some other guys who were deported in the same plane.
According to Ahmad Zaki Khalil, Refugee right activist from Sweden. Reza and his family were arrested from their home early morning of 9th December and transferred to another city by a small charter plane to join other Afghan refugees facing deportation
Zaki says; they were still waiting for the answer to Reza’s case, they had submitted and appeal for Reza’s case. but unfortunately Swedish police had brutally entered their home one early morning and detained and deported them back to Afghanistan ‘ before they get and answer to their appeal
Things were not so normal also in Kabul today as deportees from Sweden were welcomed by a suicide attack/car bomb in the Airport. Today 8 AM in the morning a blast was heard in Kabul international airport. http://www.khaama.com/heavy-explosion-heard-in-capital-kabul-3177
Security condition in Afghanistan in General and in specifically in Kabul is getting worse Which rises a question from those who send people back to such danger.Whether they don’t see such danger? or are they putting a blindfold on their eyes and ignoring all the realities in the ground!!!

Afghan MPs, Refugee hosting countries must respect the refugee conventions…

November 9, 2013December 23, 2013Posted in RefugeeLeave a comment

Today 9th November 2013 dozens of deportees and the families of those affected by deportations gathered in front of Afghan Parliament to demonstrate against deportations to Afghanistan. The demonstration started at sharp 8 and ended 10:15 Am local time

Mr Ramazan Bashardost was the first person to come and talk to those who had gathered for demonstration. He then had an interview with the media. Mr Ramazan Bashardost while talking to the media held Afghan Government responsible for the lives of Afghan refugees around the world and Afghanistan. He said; whenever Mr Hamid Karzai or anyone for the refugee ministry or foreign ministry visit European countries’ or Australia They say lie to those countries and try to convince them’ Afghanistan is safe, Which is totally wrong. Mr Bashardost also urged the Afghan refugees around the world to demonstrate in those countries they are living in ‘when President Karzai or anyone from Refugee ministry visit those countries

Ms Laila Haidari a social activist and director of Life is beautiful organization was the next speaker in the gathering. She also delivered her speech condemning inattention of Afghan government toward the Afghan Refugees around the world and Afghanistan. She addressed to the condition of Afghan refugees around the world and the misbehavior of host countries considering the international conventions.

Engineer Raza Agah was the next speaker. He is brother of 23 year old guy who lost his life in the Indonesian sea trying to reach Australia. Raza’s brother and two of his cousins were together when their boat sank in the Indonesian shores trying to reach Australia and seek for protections, but they never knew what was waiting for them. He emphasized and highlighted the condition of the families of refugees when they leave the country and arrive to their destination.

Engineer Ali Raza said we couldn’t believe our ears when we heard we have lost 3 people of our own family. Raza’s brother and his two cousins had newly graduated and were working in a construction company in Ghazni. When life got tough for them after they started getting death threats. Many of their colleagues were stopped and killed on the way to Ghazni and kabul’ when Raza’s brother and cousins were working with the company

Ms Zahra Sepehr was the next speaker representing the civil society combined of different NGOs, Journalists, and social activists. Sepehr started her speech considering the harsh condition of Afghan refugees around the world. She also emphasized on Afghan Government to fulfill their responsibilities to protect their citizens in and outside Afghanistan. She also added; host countries have to respect the international convention of Refugees and give the refugees all right to legal assistance.

Miss Zarghona Roshan director of Women and progress addressed the demonstrators with the message of justice for Afghan Refugees around the world. The right to legal rights in Europe and Australia and every part of the world. She also emphasized and criticized the Afghan Government, particularly refugee ministry in corruption. She added; refugee ministry is involved in thousands of dollars corruption, but they don’t even know what is happening with the Afghan Citizens around the world.

Abdul Ghafoor one of the Organizers of the demonstration then thanked all the refugee right groups, civil society members, journalists, students, families of those who had been affected by losing any member of their family getting to Australia or Europe, and all those who had come to join us in our cause

He then added: It is the responsibility of Afghan government to protect its citizens around the world, but unfortunately Afghan Government has failed to protect its citizens. Today while we have gathered here to raise a voice for refugees around the world and talk about the problems of those who have been forcibly deported back to Afghanistan. more than 450 Afghan refugees are living in their worst phase of life in Belgium. They are constantly being tortured and mistreated by the Belgium Government. They have even used teargas on peaceful Afghan children and woman while they have stood for their rights.

Despite all these bad days and conditions Afghan Refugee ministry or foreign ministry don’t even know. or don’t want care about their citizens around the world.

That is why we demand to Stop all Deportations to Afghanistan. and we want from the true representatives of Afghan people to raise our voice in the parliament and pressurize the ministry of Refugees and repatriation to avoid signing any kind of MOU with European and Australian government which will put lives of thousand of Afghans in danger

Miss Zarghona Roshan was again requested to come and recite the statement and demands of the protesters.

After Zarghona Roshan recited they statement and demand letter. Four female MPs from within the parliament came out to give the support to us for gathering and raising the voice of Afghan refugees around the world and deportees.

‘Farkhanda Zahra Naderi’ and the other female MPs were concerned about the Australian policies for refugees which put thousand of lives at risk of deportation. and the ongoing deportation from European countries to Afghanistan. They also emphasized every human has a right to migrate and there rights must respected according to the international conventions and laws

At the end statement letters were distributed to the media and security branches and the demo ended peacefully.

Article by Abdul Ghafoor

9 Afghan asylum seekers deported from Sweden will arrive at Kabul international airport today…

September 11, 2013December 23, 2013Posted in Force Displacement, RefugeeLeave a comment

Written by: Basir seerat and Translated by Abdul Ghafoor

From past few days news was circulating on social media about force deportation on 9 Afghan Asylum seekers from Sweden, but today police had used force against Activist groups who were demonstrating in front of the detention center to stop the deportation,

According to reports it won’t be only 9 Asylum seekers from Sweden arriving at Kabul Airport, but it will near to 30 asylum seekers arriving at Kabul International Airport today.

Activists were chanting slogans against deportation of Afghan asylum seekers back to Afghanistan. they were saying it is shameful for the Swedish police to send people back to a war torn country. which has not seen stability for more than three decades, and is still battling for peace .

Refugee rights activists say; Swedish police has bribed Afghan police authorities of Kabul International Airport to accept the deportees from Sweden, They say; those are being deported have no documents or passports, and Afghan police are receiving deportees from all over the world without any proper documentation.

Afghanistan ranks first in corruption in the world. and from the other hand they get bribery from Swedish Police to receive deportees sent back to Afghanistan.

Today in a meeting with deportees at the detention center. almost 7 of them had not been contacted by any lawyer or gone to any court.

I also contacted Afghan Embassy in Norway, and they did not even know about this happening. IOM also has confirmed to Swedish refugee activist group (far) that only two of them being deported are registered by IOM and they will be sent back to Afghanistan with proper documentations and legally. however the others will be sent illegally.

According to reports Swedish refugee right groups and activists are planning to organize a demonstration against the force deportation and Swedish police authorities for deporting people by force. The demo is planned to take place on 20th September 2013. Meanwhile another conference will be held in Stockholm university and the agenda of the conference will on migration to west. Two Afghan speakers also will represent Afghans in the conference.

Corruption is now a usual trade in Afghanistan, but foreign countries paying Afghanistan bribe to receive deportees is some thing new which activists are concerned about.