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BERLIN—There was a knock on the door when Parwana Amiri had breakfast with her husband and two young girls. An unexpected guest, a social worker, stood outside, bringing even more unforeseen news: the circle of relatives is expected to empty their home for the newcomers. No questions, no negotiation, only “within 24 hours,” they were told.
Amiri, 33, a social activist and refugee from Afghanistan who arrived in Berlin last January, fleeing the Taliban with the help of the German government after receiving threats for two consecutive years, is one of many Afghans in Germany who have been expelled. apart to make way for newly arrived refugees from Ukraine. He asked to use a pseudonym for his safety.
“The evictions were not made public on purpose. Some other people had been living in their homes for years and were torn from their social structures, adding young people who were moved to places far from their respective schools,” said Tareq Alaows, a board member of the Berlin Refugee Council, a collaboration of other organizations. contribute to improving the situation of refugees in the German capital and ensure that their rights are respected. Alaows said the government justified the deportations by claiming the Afghans had been expelled from so-called “arrival centers” where they remain only in the short term anyway. But some families had lived there for years, while other families lived in accommodation other than the arrival centres.
BERLIN—There was a knock on the door when Parwana Amiri had breakfast with her husband and two young girls. An unexpected guest, a social worker, stood outside, bringing even more unforeseen news: the circle of relatives is expected to empty their home for the newcomers. No questions, no negotiation, only “within 24 hours,” they were told.
Amiri, 33, a social activist and refugee from Afghanistan who arrived in Berlin last January, fleeing the Taliban with the help of the German government after receiving threats for two consecutive years, is one of many Afghans in Germany who have been expelled. apart to make way for newly arrived refugees from Ukraine. He asked to use a pseudonym for his safety.
“The evictions were not made public on purpose. Some other people had been living in their homes for years and were torn from their social structures, adding young people who were moved to places far from their respective schools,” said Tareq Alaows, a board member of the Berlin Refugee Council, a collaboration of other organizations. help in the situation of refugees in the German capital and ensure that their rights are respected. Alaows said the government justified the deportations by claiming that the Afghans had been expelled from so-called “arrival centers” where they deserve to stay anyway only in the short term. But some families had been living there for years, while other families lived in accommodation other than the arrival centres.
“The living situation of some other people has improved, but most were afraid to speak up, fearing that it would affect their immigration status,” Alaows said, explaining that a dozen apartments in Berlin had been emptied.
A 30-year-old Afghan man, who requested anonymity, also arrived in Germany in January with his mother and two other younger brothers, one of whom suffers from a medium illness. He said that after the circle of relatives was evicted from the same enclosure. where Amiri had lived, he, the only English-speaking member of the circle of relatives, was separated from his brothers and mother and presented accommodation in some other component of the city. While some families had been accommodated in the average arrival type Amiri had called home his first few months in Germany, others lived in hotel-like accommodations, all paid for through the German government.
“Of course, it is not the fault of Ukrainians, but we want to think about our solidarity if it is only aimed at safe people. The last few months have shown that another remedy is possible for refugees, and this will have to be systematically anchored in our society,” Alaows said.
The resolution adopted through the Department of Integration, Labor and Social Services of the Berlin Senate, arguing that “it is based on mandatory and complicated operational considerations” and that there is no other option since Ukrainians, adding many women with children, need a roof over their heads and a bed. .
“We regret that this has caused more hardship to Afghan families [and that] those affected have had to leave their family environment and may now have to maintain their social ties with wonderful difficulties,” said Stefan Strauss, spokesman for the department. He said Berlin had a total of another 83 refugee housing complexes, which already housed some 22,000 people, but that arriving Ukrainians had to be grouped into a few explained arrival centres to simplify processing. Strauss said the evicted Afghans had been given other “permanent housing” of equivalent quality, shared toilets and kitchens.
It’s not so rosy.
Amiri and his circle of relatives have already been displaced twice since their eviction in March and now live in a former hotel on the northern outskirts of Berlin in Reinickendorf, advertised as a transitional shelter for the “homeless”; this is the third house in the circle of relatives in a month.
“Securing permanent housing is not the goal,” said a Facebook post written through the Reinickendorf district workplace about the housing, and the two small rooms with a shared kitchen don’t in fact look like one. This is even better than the previous apartment in which the Se set up a circle of relatives, where even the bathrooms were shared and Amiri soon discovered that some of the citizens had a history of criminals. He was afraid it wouldn’t be for his daughters, one five-year-old, the other only 8 months old.
The circle of relatives now basically lives with other refugees, but the school’s principal, Rädnitz, who declined to give his name, said the accommodation was intended for other people who were “involuntarily homeless”.
The new position is not cheap. Amiri showed a letter detailing how much the German government will pay for the two small rooms and the communal kitchen: 37 euros per night per day, or about 4,500 euros per month, an exorbitant sum even for expensive capital. it is not even known how long they can stay: the family’s first residence, a small and well-stocked container-type apartment, belonged to them until they can find their own apartment (difficult in the overcrowded capital, even though the German government still will). pay those fees); time in the new safe haven ends at the end of July.
“We don’t know where we’re going now,” Amiri said. My daughter had already been given a position in kindergarten. We settled in slowly until we were told to move. Since then, I have not had the possibility to locate a nearby kindergarten with a vacancy. And while English-speaking social staff were available to help with immigration documents and help enroll newly arrived refugees in German classes, no assistance was provided at the new shelter.
The family’s first apartment, the container apartment, was empty and left the Foreign Policy scale in early April, weeks after several families were evicted. Social staff expressed frustration with the government’s remedy for Afghans as well as other refugees from the Middle East and North. Africa.
They pointed to one of the problems with Afghans arriving in Germany after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021. Most other people seeking protection in Germany enter the asylum system, which grants them a transitional apartment that is re-evaluated every six months. in the case of their country of origin, extensions and, in all likelihood, asylum are denied. But most Afghans evacuated since last August have completely ignored this process, immediately receiving three-year housing permits.
“This means that shortly after their arrival, Afghans fell into the same category, and are being treated, as asylum seekers who were granted asylum and who have already lived in Germany for years, able to speak the language and navigate the system. . ” a social worker said on condition of anonymity. That is why, although [Amiri] has just arrived here, he has not been presented with the same help. According to her immigration status, she has been living in Germany for years,” the social worker added.
Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany was europe’s largest refugee-hosting country and opened its borders in 2015 to others basically fleeing the war in Syria. More than 1. 24 million refugees live in Germany, Poland hosted some 2. 8 million Ukrainians in the weeks after the Feb. 24 invasion.
When the Taliban invaded the Afghan capital last August, Germany expelled some 5,000 people, most of them Afghans. “Since then, the German government has evacuated about 4,000 people and we have controlled 3,000,” said Theresa Breuer, co-founder. of the non-profit organization Kabul Luftbrücke. This brings to about 12,000 the total number of Afghans who arrived in Germany after the Taliban’s seizure of power.
But since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Germany has recorded at least 316,000 Ukrainians fleeing the war. Berlin, in the east of the country near the Polish border, is a first point of arrival for many and has so far recorded 60,000 new arrivals. The former Berlin Tegel airport, now empty, has since held the city’s largest arrival center for Ukrainian refugees, with a capacity for another 2,600 people overnight.
As Afghans, only a handful of Ukrainians will remain in the German capital indefinitely; most are headed to one of the country’s 16 states. Amiri, who arrived in Germany in late January, registered in Berlin, where he now has a three-year permit.
“My former boss was killed in Kabul, and after receiving threats in private, I feared for my life. My daughter helps me keep asking if the Taliban are coming here and despite everything, I can say “no” to her. This is the first time I feel safe, and I am grateful that Germany is building a long road for my daughters,” Amiri said. from your small but bright room.
“When the photographs gave the first impression in Ukraine, I cried for its people. I know war and its horrors. I still cry for them. I only ask that we all be treated equally. A refugee is a refugee. “
Update, April 22, 2022: This article has been updated to replace a font call to a pseudonym due to security issues.
Stefanie Glinski is a journalist who covers conflicts and crises over Afghanistan and the Middle East in general. Twitter: @stephglinski
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