Magomed was recently rounded up in the middle of the night and deported from Norway without warning.
The
40-year-old Chechen asylum seeker says he was not even informed that
his request had been rejected after seven years living in the country.
By The Numbers: Norway's Asylum Seekers
"They
brought us to Moscow and left us completely alone," he says. "Many of
us did not have proper documents and therefore they kept us at the
border for a long time. [The Norwegians] told us that their duty was to
hand us over to the Russian authorities."
Magomed, who declined
to give his full name out of fears for his safety, is now living in
Chechnya with his parents. He has been left without a job or any money
and doesn't know who to turn to for help. And his is far from an isolated case.
Asylum Numbers Drop
Members
of 50 other families living in Norway were deported the same night he
was. The number of asylum seekers who have been deported or who have had
their applications denied has increased dramatically in Norway as the
result of the government's push to drive out illegal immigrants. The
rise came even as the number of asylum seekers dropped in 2010, putting
the spotlight on the toughening of an asylum process once seen as one of
the more welcoming in Europe.
A look at the numbers provided by
the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration for January 2009 through
February 2011 shows that asylum seekers from Muslim-majority states or
regions are disproportionally affected, with citizens of Afghanistan,
Iraq, and the North Caucasus regions of Russia accounting for a large
percentage of the rejected claims. Considering the instability or
authoritarian regimes seen in many of the asylum seekers' home regions
or states, fears for their well-being are being raised.
Norway
has noted that asylum seekers are entitled to protection if they are in
danger of being killed, tortured, or "exposed to other forms of grave
abuse" upon being returned to their home country.
European
Union Human Rights Commissioner Thomas Hammarberg has denounced Norway
specifically for sending Iraqi immigrants back to five provinces in Iraq
-- including Baghdad -- that the United Nations Human Rights Commission
(UNHCR) considers too unsafe for the return of asylum seekers.
Irfan
Qaiser, a policy adviser at the refugee advocacy group Norwegian
People's Aid, says the general attitude toward immigrants, and Muslims
in particular, has deteriorated in recent years. "I think in
general the tendency [in Europe] has been -- I mean, we see that here in
Norway as well -- that the political debate has definitely been going
towards more control, more restrictions, and also linked into general
integration debates," he says.
"You know, the debate we see in
Europe now about the death of multiculturalism, etc., etc. -- that
people need to follow, we need to have clear demands on people who come
here, and we need to know what they're doing, what they're up to, even
into a debate where they have less rights than the rest of the
population."
Debate Erupts
In recent
years, debate over asylum laws has erupted across the Nordic countries.
Incidents linked to the 2005 cartoon controversy in Denmark -- including
the burning of Danish embassies in Syria, Lebanon, and Iran, and a
suicide blast carried out by an Iraqi-born bomber in Stockholm in
December -- have caused antipathy toward Muslim asylum seekers.
Last
year, 1,444 asylum seekers and illegal immigrants returned voluntarily
to their home countries with support from the Norwegian authorities, a
30 percent increase over the previous year, according to the Norwegian
Directorate of Immigration's website. One in three was Iraqi.
But
there has also been a significant rise in the number of asylum seekers,
like Magomed, who are being forcibly deported from the country. Seventy-one
Iraqis were deported in the first two months of this year alone, higher
than for all of 2009, according to data from the Norwegian Police
Immigration Service.
The number of asylum seekers forcibly sent
to Russia, a large proportion of which are from North Caucasus republics
like Chechnya and North Ossetia, has skyrocketed. There were
102 people deported to Russia in the first two months of this year,
equal to the entirety of 2010.
The most prominent was 25-year-old Madina
Salamova, better known by her pseudonym Maria Amelie. She wrote a book
about her experience fleeing from North Ossetia to Norway as a child. In
2010, Salamova was named "Norwegian of the Year" by a weekly news
magazine, and her deportation prompted protests across the country. EU
rights commissioner Hammarberg tells RFE/RL that, considering
Chechnya's current political situation, only voluntary returns should be
made to that republic.
Dangers At Home
There is evidence that other returnees also face danger after being sent home. According
to the NGO Iran Human Rights, a 19-year-old Iranian Kurd named Rahim
Rostami, who was denied asylum by Norwegian authorities and deported in
February, now finds himself in prison in Iran.
The group reports that he
is in danger of torture, ill treatment, or death at Tehran's notorious
Evin prison. Data from the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration
shows that between January 2009 and February 28 of this year, 8,289
people from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Russia applied for asylum in Norway.
During
the same period of time, 6,111 asylum seekers from these countries had
their applications rejected and were left with either appealing the
decision or returning to their country of origin within three weeks. Many
more were found to be applying for asylum after having their
applications rejected in another country in the Schengen area and were
returned to be dealt with by the country originally responsible for
their application. Last year, appeals were upheld in 6.8 percent of cases.
According
to the UNHCR, there was a 42 percent decrease in the number of asylum
claims in Norway in 2010 compared to 2009. The number of claims rejected
rose, however -- from 6,196 in 2009 to 7,673 in 2010. A
spokesperson for the Directorate of Norwegian Immigration, Kirsten
Myhre, says the number of asylum seekers has decreased because the
country has been so strict over the last two years. She explained how
the department weeds out those it doesn't think are in need of
protection.
"They are very often not credible," she says. "They
are interviewed for more or less one day, and often they don't give
information...that they are persecuted at all. They say they have been
to prison and released after one hour. Well, if the government really
wants them they would have been watched more."
Preserving The System
Hanne
Mathisen, a spokeswoman for the UNHCR's office for Baltic and Nordic
countries, says the Norwegian government has stepped up its efforts to
remove illegal immigrants in order to ensure the system is not abused. "There
is a renewed emphasis on the part of the Norwegian government to ensure
that persons that are rejected in the asylum procedure return
voluntarily, and if they don't, then that return will happen by force,"
she says.
"The argument they're making is that it is necessary in
order to deter persons that abuse the asylum system, that are actually
not in need of international protection. It's also important in order to
uphold the integrity of and support for the asylum system."
Qaiser
of Norwegian People's Aid says there have not been many cases of the
Norwegian immigration procedures breaking international conventions --
with the notable exception of a report showing that asylum seekers in
some detention centers were woken up every half hour to "prevent them
from committing suicide," a form of sleep deprivation Qaiser says is
internationally acknowledged as torture.
Rather, immigration
authorities, he says, push to the outer limits of what is considered
acceptable by international standards. The lack of transparency in the
system is what is most worrying to human rights activists.
"The
whole deportation regime is so closed, it's hard to know what goes on,
what kind of procedures," he says. "But from time to time we see that
police go in the middle of the night picking up families, placing
families and children, sending them to these deportation centers.
And...we have gotten reports that what goes on in those deportation
centers from time to time may be defined as harsh and degrading
treatment."
Asylum seekers, meanwhile, just want a place to call home. Letchi, a Chechen who was a neighbor of Magomed, says his brother was part of the group deported to Russia. "If
they send people back to Chechnya, then they should not keep them for
such a long time here [in Norway]," he says. "While they are living
here, their children are attending schools. And what should they do back
at home [in Chechnya]? Study all over again? The children are
suffering. They are neither here nor there.
"My brother and his
family were sent back in that way. My brother and Magomed were waiting
for the court's decision regarding their status. But they came to him in
the night, handcuffed them, and sent them out despite their lawyers'
protests. The police say they just follow orders."
Alisher
Sidikov and Zamira Eshanova of RFE/RL's Uzbek Service and Merkhat
Sharipzhanov of RFE/RL's Central Newsroom contributed to this report
Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/norway_asylum_seekers_iraq_chechnya_afghanistan/3545141.html
