ASYLUM SEEKERS WERE FORCIBLY RETURNED TO AFGHANISTAN DURING THE NIGHT

[PRESS RELEASE]

Late Tuesday night a flight left Finland on which several asylum seekers were forcibly deported into Kabul. An Afghan asylum seeker Mohammad Javid held that deportation flights are a human rights violation. “It is known that not all asylum seekers have been given an adequate asylum process”, he says.

The security situation in Afghanistan has not been this bad in sixteen years, according to Javid. “The government is very weak and corrupted”, he says. “The Afghanistan government can not provide safety for the deportees.” A delegation from Afghanistan visited Finland early this week. “It is a question of aid, that Afghanistan gets when it accepts deportations of asylum seekers from Finland and other EU countries”, Javid states. The Afghan asylum seekers are terrified and afraid. “We appeal to the Finnish government so that it would stop these inhumane forced deportations”, Javid says.

Noor – who is married to Mari from Salo – is one of the Afghans who was forced into the Kabul plane. “I could not even talk on the phone with my husband because the police took away his phone”, says Mari. She is surprised by the authorities’ actions. “The processing of prohibition of enforcement was supposed to be on 24th of May. Why is he being returned before the asylum process has been completed?” She held the behaviour of the Finnish Immigration Service outrageous. “Things are not properly examined”, she says. “I do not trust the immigration service anymore. My husband was just a paper.”

Her husband managed to get out of the previous Kabul deportation flight at the last minute on 3rd of April. He left a new asylum application, in which the mistakes by the Finnish Immigration Service and the lawyers were corrected, and new threats in Afghanistan were made clear. “The Finnish Immigration Service still made a negative decision in one day and the highest administrative court rejected the prohibition of enforcement”, Mari reiterates.

On the forced deportation flight, there were allegedly about twenty Afghans. “I heard that there is a family with four children”, Mari says. She cannot comprehend how Finland became a country that sends people to life-threatening conditions. She does not understand the Finnish people who make fun of people’s adversities and death. “My husband has never had anything to do with the police before he came to Finland”, Mari says. Now her husband hides in Kabul.

Press release from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs on 12th of May 2017: “The situation in Afghanistan is very difficult. Taliban controls over a third of the land area and recent ISIL strikes have been devastating, especially in Kabul.”

The asylum seekers’ Right To Live demonstration on the Helsinki Railway Station Square has continued for 100 days on Saturday 20th of May 2017.