Two Afghan women wearing burkas buy gold in a jewelry shop in Herat, Afghanistan, in 2010. The European Commission met with Taliban officials Tuesday about deportation. File Photo by Hossein Fatemi/UPI | License Photo
The European Union and the Taliban met in Brussels on Tuesday to negotiate the return of Afghan refugees to the country.
Officials from the European Commission and 15 member states met discreetly with the regime, and several Europeans criticized the move.
“I am shaken and deeply disturbed by this,” Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai told Radio Free Europe.
Yousafzai was shot in the face at age 15 by the Taliban for defying its ban on education for girls.
“This is the same Taliban that banned girls from secondary schools and forced them into marriage. The same Taliban that, earlier this month, arrested dozens of women in Herat for how they were dressed. The same Taliban that detains, beats and executes women who dare to speak out or break their rules.”
Brussels has defended the meeting saying European countries need to have a system to deport asylum seekers who commit violent crimes.
Sweden, which has one of the largest Afghan populations, co-chaired the meeting outside the EC’s premises. The meeting was called strictly technical because the EU doesn’t recognize the Taliban government.
Members of the European Parliament have repeatedly backed resolutions condemning the Taliban, which contrasts with the EC’s willingness to meet with the regime, said Socialist Workers’ Party MEP Juan Fernando López Aguilar.
“I’m appalled,” he said. “It’s absolutely an outrage and a total loss of faith and the credibility of the European Union that it can hold such a double standard,” The Guardian reported.
López Aguilar rejected the EU’s argument that it needed to be able to deport migrants.
He accused the EU of allowing the far right to set the agenda.
“We’re 450 million people all together. There’s no reason to panic when you talk about a certain number of migrants fleeing from despair or from a lack of opportunities. Let alone persecution, which is grounds for them to seek international protection,” he said. “Migration is not a threat, not even a crisis. It’s a constant fact of the history of mankind.”
Swedish Migration Minister Johan Forssell told a different story to local media.
“It is incredibly important that these criminals are deported,” Forssell said. “And that is not possible today. They do not want to participate. They do not want to go home.”
Socialist MEP Cecilia Strada called the meeting a “shameful chapter for Europe,” telling Euronews that it grants legitimacy to “a regime that tramples on the rights of women and girls and imposes a system of gender apartheid.”
The European Council on Refugees and Exiles said Afghanistan isn’t safe for return because of deteriorating human rights, the lack of effective legal protection and the ongoing risks of persecution.
Green MEP Hannah Neumann, of Germany, said on social media: “If Europe returns young Afghan men into poverty and hopelessness, many will end up dependent on the only structures still offering shelter and food: Taliban networks and madrassas.”
She said it plays right into the Taliban’s hands.
“This is how authoritarian systems hold power. Not only through violence, but through dependency, social control and enforced loyalty,” she said. “By deporting people into desperation, we are not weakening the Taliban. We risk strengthening the very structures that keep them in power.”
