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SWEDEN: Refugees Test Progressive Claims

Lisa Monique Söderlindh

STOCKHOLM, Aug 6 2007 (IPS) - Rejected Afghan and Iraqi asylum-seekers have launched nationwide protest against a stricter migration policy.

“We have a right to asylum; stop deportations”, shouted some 300 Afghans who joined a six-day march to protest against a recent decision by the Swedish Migration Board to deport asylum-seekers to Afghanistan.

“It is hard to understand that Sweden – a guiding and developed country in terms of human rights takes such an inhuman and unacceptable decision,” Reza Javid, co-organiser of the protest march told IPS.

The protesters marched a total of 200km, starting from the Migration Board office in the city of Norrköping, located south of capital Stockholm on the east coast. Another 200 joined the demonstration outside the Swedish parliament, where the protesters ended their march last week.

Insufficient food and drink caused seven of the participants to faint from exhaustion, and they had to be taken to hospital. About 50 others were given medial care by an emergency group.

Following the protest march, ten Afghans began a hunger strike Saturday Aug. 4 at Sergels Torg, one of Stockholm’s central squares. They will stay there a week, with chains around their feet and black bandages covering their mouths, appealing to authorities to let them stay in Sweden.

“Asylum-seekers are defenceless – our only weapon is our voice. We have to protest and demonstrate,” said Javid

In mid-May the Migration Board decided on deportations to Afghanistan based on a directive by the Swedish Migration Court of Appeal. The order would provide for repatriation of single arriving men “since the conditions for single men to be reintegrated in Afghanistan are good.”

The asylum-seekers do not think so. “I have found myself a living here in Sweden. Why can I not work any longer? Why I am forced to leave?” asked Davod Rasuli, 31. His temporary permit has expired, and his appeal has been rejected.

“I refuse to return to the war in Afghanistan,” said Rasuli, adding that unless authorities reverse their decision on deportation, Afghans in Sweden will take out another march from the city of Gothenburg, located on the west coast, to Stockholm – a distance of approximately 500km.

According to statistics of the Migration Board, from January 2000 up to Jul. 31 this year, a total of 1,811 Afghans have been granted asylum. In all 127 have been given refugee status, 1,542 applications have been rejected, and approximately 900 asylum applications are pending.

Concern is growing over those whose applications have been rejected.

“Sweden should definitely not start implementing any forced deportations, whether young, single arriving men, or any one else,” Bengt Kristiansson, secretary-general of the non-governmental organisation The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA) told IPS. “Speaking about young men is irrelevant; it doesn’t matter whether you are young or old in areas where war is prevailing.”

The SCA has been carrying out development programmes in 16 provinces of Afghanistan, primarily in the fields of education, health and disability, since 1982. The SCA says all Afghan asylum-seekers should be allowed to stay in Sweden until conditions in Afghanistan have stabilised.

Humanitarian organisations such as the Red Cross and Amnesty Sweden have also raised concern over lack of individual consideration of cases.

“The Migration Board seems to generally consider that no Afghan is in need of protection,” Madeleine Seidlitz, asylum and refugee legal expert with Amnesty Sweden told IPS. “This is very strange, because the conditions have not improved that much since the time when the same persons were granted temporarily asylum.”

The Migration Board rejects the charges by NGOs. “We always carry out individual assessments in each individual case,” Lars Påhlsson, deputy director-general of The Board of Migration told IPS.

The protests against Afghan deportations is further fuelled by the Migration Board’s new criteria for asylum-seekers from Iraq.

Nearly half of Europe’s Iraqi asylum-seekers come to Sweden, where they constitute the biggest asylum-seeking group. A total of 20,000 Iraqis are expected to arrive in Sweden by the end of 2007.

More than half of about 9,000 Iraqis who applied for asylum in the first six months of 2007 have been granted residence permit. But as a result of stricter criteria, the percentage of rejected asylum applications has increased during the second quarter of this year.

There is no armed conflict in Iraq, but “severe circumstances”, the Migration Board says in its new policy, based on three guiding verdicts from the Migration Appeal Court. Earlier considered on a case-by-case basis, all Iraqi asylum- seekers will now be deported unless they can prove that they face personal risk in their homeland.

On Jul. 28 one of the judges behind the verdict had his home vandalised by the extreme left-wing group Antifascistisk Action (AFA). Threatening slogans were sprayed on the walls of his house, red paint was poured over the steps, and an axe left outside.

“Iraq and Afghanistan belong to the world’s most critical, organised prevailing armed conflicts,” Peter Wallensten, professor of peace and conflict research at Uppsala University told IPS. “We will be pleased to discuss with the Migration Board what their definition of an armed conflict entails.”

An armed conflict is “a contested incompatibility which concerns government and/or territory where the use of armed force between two parties, of which at least one is the government of a state, results in at least 25 battle-related deaths per year,” notes the Uppsala Conflict Data Project, UCDP. According to the UCDP, a total of 3,537 people were killed in battles in Iraq last year.

“But no matter what definition we find correct, Iraqis are in need of protection,” Seidlitz told IPS. “It is simply wrong of the Migration Board to hide behind definitions in the way that they are doing.”

Seidlitz stresses respect for international law. “The only thing one should ask in an asylum determination process is whether the person is in need of legal protection – yes or no?”

In rejecting three Iraqi asylum appeals and forcibly deporting an Iraqi to Baghdad in May, Sweden is violating the non-refoulement principle, Seidlitz said. “It is not an excuse for Swedish migration courts, but today, practically all countries in the EU are violating this principle.”

Codified within the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention, the non-refoulement principle prohibits the return of refugees to a country where a person is likely to face persecution or torture, or where their life or freedom could be threatened.

According to a United Nations Refugee Agency (UNCHR) advisory issued in December 2006, no Iraqi from southern and central Iraq should be forcibly sent back until there is substantial improvement in the security and human rights situation in the country.

“We will have to wait until the national procedure has been exhausted and see how the decisions (Iraqi asylum rejections) play out in the appeal process,” Hans ten Feld, head of UNHCR in the Baltic and Nordic countries told IPS.

“We certainly hope that there will be a reconsideration and that the new decision reached will be in line with our guidelines.”