Today, 4 February 2020 another deportation from Austria to Afghanistan. The first under #TürkisGrün, more will follow!
About 20 young people who are mercilessly deported to a country at war. A country where we know that 45,000 Afghan soldiers have died in recent years, a country where at least four civilians die every day as a result of attacks, and the number is constantly rising. A country that a soldier who was stationed there tells me is even worse than we think here.
Afghanistan, a country at war, a country where a human life is worth nothing, plagued by terror, corruption, hunger.
Young men are now sitting in this plane, drenched in sweat, surrounded by alien police and empathy-less human rights observers. And they know as well as we do that there is no escape. Tomorrow morning they will land in the country from which they fled 4-5 years ago, sometimes even 10 years ago, out of fear for their lives. And where they are already welcomed at the airport by the tragedy of the country. A corrupt police force that takes away their mobile phones, their money, everything they still have.
No one is waiting for them there. Most of their families have left the country or they have been expelled because in Afghanistan, just like here, the lie has manifested itself that only criminals are deported from Europe. Those who set foot on the soil of their "homeland" are already stigmatised as criminals. No one is waiting for them. They are outcasts, lost, pawns of a populist, vote-seeking, inhumane policy.
No one offers them help in the most dangerous country in the world, the billions Afghanistan gets from the EU for the repatriation are a hush money for this brutal violation of human rights, for this trade that disappears without any justification in the fat bodies of the president and the Afghan parliamentarians. Their children study abroad, far away from the daily violence, far away from all the misery to which young people are once again exposed after 4-5 years among us.
For all of them this is an extreme shock, the experts speak of retraumatisation in this case. I personally can tell you about one case. Months of hiding in a room in Kabul, panic attacks, sweating and tears for months, 2 suicide attempts. A young man who went to a technical school here, was about to graduate, had a job offer. Only the human consciousness of those politically responsible was missing to spare him this suffering.
This and much worse is what happens to all those who are deported. Deep psychological wounds are torn in our name.
I'm always asked, especially on days like this, "what else? The rule of law must be upheld". The rule of law has wisely provided for the possibility of not deporting people to countries at war despite negative asylum decisions. But Kurz and Co, who are eagerly trying to make "letting people drown" in the Mediterranean acceptable, don't bother for a second to make use of their marketing buzzwords.
Creation, humility, Christian values, solidarity, valuing voluntary work, all such empty words that even the echo that arises in this emptiness is unbearable.
So, as always on these evenings, I sit in front of a candle and cry. Bitterly, despite the awareness that I am a happy, blessed person. I cry, deeply saddened by the fact that tomorrow these young people will be standing in the war-torn country of Afghanistan, condemned to this misery, carrying nothing but 50 euros, a mobile phone that doesn't work and their bare lives. And that for most of those people there is nothing and no one to help them in any way.
Possibly death, which sets them free.
I stare into the candle and ask myself, what now? What are we doing to these young people who have begun to gain a foothold here after often dramatic experiences of flight? What dramatic violation of human rights are we committing in our capitalist, empathy-less prepotency and how do we justify this to ourselves, our children and above all, to the people affected?
I don't know......only deep sadness and compassion for the young people.
#StopDeportationToAfghanistan #BeSafe #AfghanistanIsNotSafe https://www.ecoi.net/de/laender/afghanistan/themendossiers/allgemeine-sicherheitslage-in-afghanistan/
Comments 1
The really most astonishing argument for such deportations that I keep hearing is the invocation of the Geneva Refugee Convention, or the fact that no grounds for asylum have allegedly been found and that one is therefore obliged to deport people. The Refugee Convention DOES NOT FORBID ANYONE to take in people, it merely lays down minimum standards to be met when assessing whether someone MUST be granted asylum. At least that is the theory...
The situation in people's minds seems confused - like an intellectual shambles. The result of a constant propagandistic bombardment that knows only one narrative: different from us, therefore evil, therefore out!
It is a truism that there are evil-minded people everywhere: among the natives as well as among the immigrants. But it is also a truism that criminals should be sentenced according to a criminal law that meets democratic standards, and that people should not be held in clan custody simply because they belong to a group that has been chosen as a scapegoat for political reasons.
The rule of law has the task of ensuring the common good by ensuring that commandments and rules are observed and by sanctioning any non-compliance accordingly. But when attitudes find their way into the administration of justice that violate every precept of humanity and, what is more, bend existing law (for example, when deportations take place before the end of ongoing proceedings), when people act as if they have no choice, even though they consciously ignore or even vehemently reject possible solutions that create space for LEGAL and humane decisions, then the rule of law fails and fails to fulfil one of its fundamental tasks.
There are certainly many arguments that have to be weighed up when making decisions in the asylum procedure. One will not be able to grant asylum to everyone who applies for it. That is not what this is about. The point is that people who have done everything they could in their situation to show that they want to become part of our society, that they want to work with us for the common good, are made to understand with self-righteous empathy that they are not welcome, and not under any circumstances.
That is the real tragedy and the real danger of this development for all of us. Yes, and I have emphasised this time and again, Austria does a lot in the field of asylum - especially in comparison to other countries. We take in more people than many other countries, we offer care services from the very beginning that hardly any other country offers, AND when we do that, we are successful.
This makes deportations like today's all the more perplexing. Austria cannot take in all Afghans, I am told again and again in conversations. I know that too, and it is not up for discussion. It is a matter of the immediate mandate to help and support. Should I refuse a thirsty person a sip from my bottle because the water in my bottle will not be enough for all the thirsty people in the world? Should I not protect a child who is being abused because the thought is in my head that I will not be able to protect all children?
No one I know would answer "yes" to these questions. We must try to bring people closer together. A number must become a face, a laugh, a request, a shared memory....
I am sometimes also perplexed by the hatefulness that one encounters in conversations about refugees. At the same time, I often experience a lot of compassion and meet people who actively contribute to helping others. I see in my immediate environment that many things work.
Events like today's are all the more painful. I am also in favour of the state ensuring that people can live in peace and tranquillity, in a free, democratic society. Forces that threaten to infiltrate this society and want to destroy it must be opposed by the state, we must all oppose them.
Unfortunately, at the moment it is often pretended that the majority of people who come to us are only interested in destroying our society. They are perceived almost exclusively as a threat, a danger. If we do not succeed in breaking through this narrative, in exposing the calculation of those who have conjured this story out of a hat for what it is, namely a perfidious play to maintain power structures, then our society as a whole will suffer even more damage than it is already doing.
I am not talking about a policy of supposedly "open borders", but a policy of "open hearts" and such a policy does not push people away into chaos and their personal ruin.