Published : 14-09-2018
The German authorities on Wednesday deported the Palestinian refugee from Syria Mohamed Mousa to Bulgaria on account that his fingerprint was first taken in the latter country.
His family said he was arrested at the Migration Office and detained in a one-square-meter cell for 12 hours. Police injected him with an anesthetic substance to keep him under control.
In appeals emailed to AGPS, Mousa’s family called on the international human rights institutions to pressurize Germany to backtrack on the refoulement decision.
Sometime earlier, the Supreme Administrative Court of Lower Saxony had ruled that asylum seekers should not be forcibly sent back to Hungary, where they are likely to face inhuman and degrading treatment.
Under a European Union law known as the Dublin Regulation, a migrant should apply for asylum in the first country he/she arrives and was registered in. Once someone is registered as having arrived in one country and their fingerprint is taken, they cannot apply for asylum anywhere else. Their fingerprint is entered into a database that is searchable by police throughout the EU.
If they apply for asylum in another country, their fingerprint will come up; Their claim does not have to be considered and they can face deportation back to the country where they were first registered. Those who are sent back are referred to as having been “Dublined”.
Hundreds of Palestinian refugees fleeing war-torn Syria have been subjected to refoulement by European countries, where they had landed after being rescued from over-packed vessels off the Mediterranean coast.
As political attitudes in Europe have shifted against asylum seekers and refugees, the number of deportation requests under Dublin has skyrocketed. Palestinian refugees are separated from friends and sometimes family in communities where they have started to build new lives.
The German authorities on Wednesday deported the Palestinian refugee from Syria Mohamed Mousa to Bulgaria on account that his fingerprint was first taken in the latter country.
His family said he was arrested at the Migration Office and detained in a one-square-meter cell for 12 hours. Police injected him with an anesthetic substance to keep him under control.
In appeals emailed to AGPS, Mousa’s family called on the international human rights institutions to pressurize Germany to backtrack on the refoulement decision.
Sometime earlier, the Supreme Administrative Court of Lower Saxony had ruled that asylum seekers should not be forcibly sent back to Hungary, where they are likely to face inhuman and degrading treatment.
Under a European Union law known as the Dublin Regulation, a migrant should apply for asylum in the first country he/she arrives and was registered in. Once someone is registered as having arrived in one country and their fingerprint is taken, they cannot apply for asylum anywhere else. Their fingerprint is entered into a database that is searchable by police throughout the EU.
If they apply for asylum in another country, their fingerprint will come up; Their claim does not have to be considered and they can face deportation back to the country where they were first registered. Those who are sent back are referred to as having been “Dublined”.
Hundreds of Palestinian refugees fleeing war-torn Syria have been subjected to refoulement by European countries, where they had landed after being rescued from over-packed vessels off the Mediterranean coast.
As political attitudes in Europe have shifted against asylum seekers and refugees, the number of deportation requests under Dublin has skyrocketed. Palestinian refugees are separated from friends and sometimes family in communities where they have started to build new lives.
