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For the first time since the Taliban took power in 2021, Germany's government deported people to Afghanistan – 28 in the first flight last week.
As Human Rights Watch and other organizations have extensively documented, the human rights situation in Afghanistan is catastrophic.
But the German Federal Interior Ministry, which organized the deportations, seems to be turning a blind eye to the crisis. “Afghan nationals, all of whom were convicted offenders, had no right to stay in Germany,” a government spokesperson said.
These people are being sent back to the Taliban's Afghanistan, known for egregious human rights violations, a country where people are publicly flogged, and women are largely erased from public life.
The situation is so bad that the UN has said no one should be returned to Afghanistan.
The deportations came a week after a Syrian man confessed to a deadly knife attack in Solingen and just days before last Sunday’s state elections in Thuringia and Saxony. The man had been slated for deportation after his asylum application was rejected.
Both factors combined sparked a heated political debate about asylum and deportation regulations in the country. The overt racism exposed in these conversations, which works to the advantage of the far-right, is deeply troubling.
With rising hate speech and attacks on racialized people, including migrants, Chancellor Scholz vowed, still, to enforce tougher migration policies and step up deportations, even to Syria and Afghanistan. With the deportation flight last Friday, the government fulfilled its vows.
The opposition has made similar comments. CDU parliamentary group leader Friedrich Merz spoke of a “national emergency” and called for a general ban on the admission of people from Afghanistan and Syria.
Today, federal migration commissioner Joachim Stamp even discussed the possibility of deporting migrants to Rwanda.
It should be clear by now – also to the German government – that abandoning fundamental values for potential short-term political gains is not a winning, or defensible, strategy.
Furthermore, the democratic principle of rule of law should also mean respect for international law.
Extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances and torture are happening in Afghanistan. No one is safe there.
No one, regardless of the crimes they have committed, should be deported to a place where they are at risk of serious human rights violations. The German government should know better.
