Germany urges Pakistan to allow back over 200 expelled Afghans

BERLIN:

Berlin said Monday that more than 200 Afghans waiting to be offered sanctuary in Germany had been deported by Pakistan to their Taliban-run home country in recent days.
The German government was urging Islamabad to allow them back, said foreign ministry spokesman Josef Hinterseher, as an aid group voiced alarm for their fate and those of others.
The deportees are part of a group previously offered refuge in Germany but now caught between Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s tougher immigration policy and a wave of expulsions from Pakistan.
Pakistani police had recently arrested “around 450” Afghans who were previously accepted under the German scheme for people at risk from the Taliban, Hinterseher told reporters.
Of those, “211 people, according to our current information, have been deported to Afghanistan,” he said.
Another “245 people were allowed to leave camps” in Pakistan where they had been gathered prior to their scheduled deportation, he said.
“We are continuing to talk to Pakistan to facilitate the return of those who have already been deported.”
Last week two German rights groups launched legal proceedings against two German ministers, accusing them of “abandonment and failure to render assistance” to those hoping for German visas under the scheme.
Germany set up the programme under former chancellor Olaf Scholz in the wake of the Taliban’s 2021 takeover, to help Afghans who had worked with German institutions and their families.
It also included people deemed particularly threatened by the Taliban, including journalists and human rights activists.
However, the programme has been put on hold as part of a stricter immigration policy brought in under Merz, who took office in May, leaving some 2,000 Afghans stranded in Pakistan waiting for German visas.
Pakistan first launched a deportation drive in 2023 and renewed it in April when it rescinded hundreds of thousands of residence permits for Afghans, threatening to arrest those who did not leave.
Eva Beyer from the Airbridge Kabul initiative set up to help those affected told AFP that the deportees now faced a “critical situation”.
She said that “around 350 people”, including those freed from the camps over the weekend, were still at risk of deportation.
“Visa procedures have been frozen since May, nothing’s been happening since then,” she said.
The German government says the programme is still under review despite a court ruling last month which found that it had a “legally binding commitment” to give visas to those who had been accepted.
A German interior ministry spokesman said Monday that an individual review, potentially followed by security screening, was underway for each person in the admission programme.