Minister Alexander Dobrindt<\/a> said after Friday\u2019s meeting in southern Germany with the interior ministers of France, Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic and Denmark, as well as EU Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner.<\/p>\nThe cohort issued a five-page communique on their aims, which included the establishment of \u201creturn hubs\u201d for holding people outside the EU, enabling asylum procedures in third countries, and allowing deportations to Afghanistan and Syria as standard practice.<\/p>\n
All measures would require approval from Brussels.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we analyse what has been agreed here, it\u2019s lofty ambitions, but not much detail about how they intend to pursue what\u2019s in these five pages,\u201d said Al Jazeera\u2019s Dominic Kane, reporting from Berlin.<\/p>\n
Ministers, he said, had talked about \u201cthe sorts of things that they agree on, but they know they can\u2019t implement them themselves as unilateral decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking after the meeting, Dobrindt said, \u201cWe wanted to send a signal that Germany is no longer sitting in the brakeman\u2019s cab on migration issues in Europe, but is in the locomotive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Afghans deported<\/p>\n
Hours before the meeting, Germany demonstrated just how serious it was about cracking down on migration by sending 81 Afghan nationals back to their homeland, prompting an outcry from rights organisations.<\/p>\n
Amnesty International criticised the deportations, saying the situation in Afghanistan was \u201ccatastrophic\u201d and that \u201cextrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances and torture are commonplace\u201d.<\/p>\n
Europe\u2019s top economy had stopped deportations to Afghanistan and closed its embassy in Kabul following the Taliban movement\u2019s return to power in 2021.<\/p>\n
But Berlin resumed expulsions last year when the previous government of Olaf Scholz expelled 28 convicted Afghans.<\/p>\n
Current Chancellor Friedrich Merz defended the expulsions of the 81 Afghan men, saying he was \u201cgrateful\u201d to be able to deliver on promises made when entering government in May.<\/p>\n
None of those deported \u201chad a residence status any more. All asylum applications were legally rejected without further legal recourse\u201d, he said at a news conference.<\/p>\n
Bavaria state\u2019s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said 15 of the deported Afghans had been incarcerated for crimes, including murder and manslaughter, sexual offences and property crimes.<\/p>\n
The state of Baden-Wuerttemberg said 13 Afghans deported from there had been jailed for crimes including homicide, bodily harm, drug offences and serious arson.<\/p>\n
In the wake of the announcement, the United Nations said no one should be sent back to Afghanistan, whatever their status.<\/p>\n
The UN human rights commissioner called for an \u201cimmediate halt to the forcible return of all Afghan refugees and asylum-seekers\u201d, highlighting the risks faced by returnees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Berlin calls itself \u2018locomotive\u2019 of European crackdown on immigration, expelling 81 Afghans before meeting. Germany\u2019s interior minister has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2881,521,2000,299,1824,4582,13642,6657,12,285,6658],"class_list":{"0":"post-272588","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-afghanistan","9":"tag-asia","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-germany","13":"tag-human-rights","14":"tag-humanitarian-crises","15":"tag-migration","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-politics","18":"tag-refugees"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114875412300588161","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}