InfoMigrants By Marion MacGregor Published on : 2021/04/13
Stigmatization, unemployment, insecurity: Many asylum seekers deported from Austria to Afghanistan say the reality is even worse than the media reports.
Dehqan, a former police officer in his mid-thirties, fled Afghanistan in 2014 and sought asylum in Austria. Five years later he was forced to return. Rejected by Austria, now he suffers rejection in his home country for being a deportee. His relatives complain: What did you do in Austria in all these years? You did not achieve anything.
Dehqan is one of 16 Afghan returnees from Austria who were interviewed by a team led by Ali Ahmad, an Afghan researcher at the Vienna Institute for International Dialogue and Cooperation (VIDC). Like Dehqan, most of the interviewees for Ahmad’s study, published in January 2021, were forced to return against their will.