Afghanistan - detailed demands of protesters

In addition to the general demands that were drafted together with the Iraqi community, as the Afghan representatives we demand the Finnish Immigration Service to note the following:

1. We demand that Finland recognizes that Afghanistan not a safe country for refugees to return to

Security situation in Afghanistan is not improving. In fact, it is getting worse as terrorist organisations such as Taliban, the Haqqani network and ISIS are growing stronger. 

The terrorist organizations have got the Afghan government on their knees. This prompted the Afghan state to beg for a peace deal with the Taliban, however, failing in this. One indication of the worsening situation is that, in February, the top U.S. general overseeing coalition military operations in Afghanistan asked for deployment of few thousand more international troops to fight of Taliban insurgency.

Kidnapping, assassination and systematic killing of the civilians also speak of the weakness of the Afghan state. The war in Afghanistan has been the longest unsuccessful military conflict for the US. Also the International Red Cross has recently stopped working in Afghanistan because of the worsening security situation. 

UNAMA recorded the highest amount of civilian casualties in 2016 despite the record number of security personnel present in the country.  One painful example of civilian casualty is a mother losing three sons in one day. The European Commission for EU citizens abroad has advised all EU citizens to avoid travelling to Afghanistan. 

In addition, the ongoing mass deportation of Afghan refugees from Pakistan and Iran to Afghanistan has prompted chaos in Afghanistan where UNHCR warns of humanitarian crisis. UNHCR has described the situation as ‘humanitarian emergency,’ and Human Rights Watch has also criticized this. 

The conflicts causing the worsening security situation have to do with clashes of ethnic, religious and political groups. Isis’s declared war on shia Hazaras has severely affected the situation of the shia minority in Afghanistan. As Human Rights Watch reported in October 2016, Isis regularly targets Hazara protesters in Kabul, such as this attack in July 2016 that killing almost 80 and wounded 200. 

Shia Hazara victims of discrimination as highlighted inthe Swedish country report of Afghanistan. Also Finnish news have reported of the persecution of Hazaras.

Afghanistan is a failed state. Insecurity brings out the worst: corruption and lack of transparency in the regions under the government control are very common.

Rejection of refugees on the basis of internal flight/migration is not the solution because of the incompetency and the corruption of the Afghan government. Afghanistan is listed 8th on the list of most corrupt government on Transparency International. Corruption within the justice and security personnel in Afghanistan is so serious, that it would be a violation of human right of an Afghan asylum seeker to be sent to Afghanistan to get served justice.

2. We demand Finnish Immigration Service to take responsibility and that inexperienced employees and poor and outdated country reports have led to faulty decisions. These decisions need to be reviewed again in order to prevent refoulement

When the number of asylum seekers in Finland rose in 2015, Finnish Immigration services employed inexperienced staff with little training, causing a lot of mistakes in decision makings. The immigration service workers were pressured to make decisions quickly which have resulted in mistakes.

The mistakes that have occurred when dealing with the asylum cases cannot be undone during the court processes. The court has been dealing with wrongly done cases and making decisions on the basis of wrongly done cases. Finnish immigration services country report is different to Sweden’s, in the Swedish country report the security situation is described as deteriorating.

  

Refugees should not become the victims of differences of policies between courts and Immigration services. 

Examples of wrongly done cases include:

-  Words lost in translation (i.e. Iranian and Kurdish translators have been used for Afghan asylum seekers) 

- People have not had the chance to review what asylum interview protocol to make sure their statments are rightfully recorded. Also, proof of presecution has not been considered carfully enough when making asylum decisions.

- Cases of predator lawyers have also wrecked chances of an asylum seeker to have a just process of asylum too.

3. We demand that deportations must be immediately stopped, and residence permit based on humanitarian protection must be brought back

Considering these mistakes in dealing with the asylum processes, and that Afghanistan is not considered to be safe due to the evidence that we have presented, all deportations to Afghanistan must be stopped. 

There is a humanitarian crisis taking place in Afghanistan, and residence permit on the basis of humanitarian protection should be re-introduced. The Finnish Immigration Office must use its political influence to make this happen with the Finnish government and parliament.

4. We demand that reception centers will not throw refugees out 

Finnish immigration services should use their political power to guarantee that the right to shelter and subsistence of refugees are guaranteed by municipalities. 

Different municipalities have different policies in dealing with refugees who gets evicted from reception centres, Refugees should not suffer due to difference of policies. 

All citizens living in Finland are entitled to health care, provision of health care on urgent cases only are making refugees to suffer.