Foreign Policy’s (FP) Stefanie Glinski reported last week that Germany has evicted hundreds of Afghan refugees from government accommodations to create space for Ukrainians who have been displaced as a result of the Russia-Ukraine war.
Berlin’s Senate Department for Integration, Labor and Social Services has said the evictions were “operationally necessary” because there were no other options in place to offer shelter to a massive influx of Ukrainian refugees.
The Department’s press secretary, Stefan Strauss, said, “We regret that this caused additional hardships to the Afghan families and that the affected people had to move out of their familiar surroundings, and now possibly have to keep up with their social connections with great difficulty.”
He revealed that Berlin was already hosting around 22,000 refugees across 83 accommodation centres prior to the arrival of Ukrainian refugees. In fact, Germany has taken in roughly 12,000 people from Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover last August. Moreover, he reassured that the Afghan refugees have been provided with equivalent housing elsewhere.
Germany is displacing #Afghan refugees to make way for Ukrainians, Foreign Policy reported.
— MR Dawod Zai💧 (@MrDawodZai) April 22, 2022
Afghans said that they have been informed to clear out their home for newly arriving refugees from #Ukraine, adding that "no questions, no negotiation, just "out within 24 hours." pic.twitter.com/hme95zs8vk
The government has also justified its decision by saying that the Afghans were displaced from what were short-term “arrival centres.”
However, a board member of the Berlin Refugee Council, Tareq Alaows, claims that some families had been living in these homes for years, alleging that this is why their evictions “purposefully weren’t publicised.” “Some people had lived in their homes for years and were ripped out of their social structures, including children who were moved to locations far from their respective schools,” he told FP.
He went on to say that impacted families are afraid to speak up as they worry that it could impact their immigration status. Moreover, some families have been forced to move three times in a month.
Germany has taken in around 316,000 Ukrainian refugees since the start of the war on February 24. In fact, it is Europe’s biggest host country for refugees, and has taken in around 1.24 asylum-seekers since 2015.
Several members of the European Union (EU), including Poland, Hungary, Austria, and Bulgaria, have been accused of discriminatory treatment of refugees from different parts of the world. While these countries have warmly accepted Ukrainian refugees, migrants of colour fleeing the same war have been treated unfairly, with many being turned away from the borders and even being refused entry on trains leaving Ukraine.