2024-08-01 09:40:39
The FDP wants more people who are required to leave Germany to do so. Its general secretary accuses one coalition partner in particular of adopting a “blocking attitude”.
FDP General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai has called on the Greens and their Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, to pave the way for more deportations. “Ms Baerbock and the Greens must not stand in the way of the deportation offensive announced by the Chancellor,” the FDP politician told the German Press Agency. Anything else would cause people to shake their heads and benefit populists.
As a consequence of the fatal knife attack in Mannheim, Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) announced that the deportation of serious criminals and terrorist threats to Afghanistan and Syria would again be permitted. The Federal Government has no diplomatic relations with the Islamist Taliban in Kabul or with the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. However, according to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, it is conducting confidential negotiations with third countries through which a deportation could perhaps be organized. On May 31, an Afghan injured five men with a knife on Mannheim’s market square; 29-year-old police officer Rouven Laur died of his injuries two days later.
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) had expressed general skepticism on Friday, without directly referring to Scholz or others. She said: “I believe that, especially in such uncertain times, it is not a contribution to security to make promises when the next day you are no longer quite sure how you can actually keep them.”
The FDP general secretary, on the other hand, is convinced that deportations to Syria and Afghanistan are absolutely necessary, especially when it comes to Islamist “threats”. Germany has not deported anyone to Syria for more than twelve years. The last deportations to Afghanistan took place before the Taliban took power in 2021.
Such repatriations would serve to make Germany safer and relieve the burden on social systems, said Djir-Sarai. He therefore had no understanding for the “blockade attitude of the foreign minister”. Repatriations to these countries are also possible via neighboring countries. The FDP politician also referred to a ruling by the Higher Administrative Court in Münster, which recently found that civilians in Syria no longer face “a serious, individual threat to their lives or physical integrity as a result of indiscriminate violence in the context of an internal armed conflict.”
Last year, a total of 16,430 people were deported from Germany. In the first quarter of 2024, there were 4,791 deportations.