Agency Report –
A plane chartered by the German government took off from Pakistan’s capital Islamabad on Wednesday carrying Afghans who have been granted admission to Germany.
The passengers have all received a legally binding admission, a spokesman for the German Foreign Office said.
The plane is expected to land in the eastern German city of Leipzig later on Wednesday. The passengers are then to be taken to a camp in central Germany before being distributed among the federal states two weeks later.
According to Foreign Office figures, around 2,600 vulnerable people from Afghanistan are currently waiting in Pakistan to be admitted to Germany.
They include former staff of German institutions in Afghanistan and their relatives, as well as Afghans who face persecution by the Taliban, for example because they previously campaigned for human rights as lawyers or journalists.
Germany’s next government plans to end the admission programmes, stating in its newly released coalition agreement: “We will end voluntary federal admission programmes as far as possible (e.g. Afghanistan) and not launch any new programmes.”
Afghans who are still waiting to leave Islamabad could soon come under considerable pressure as Pakistan began a new wave of deportations of Afghan refugees at the beginning of April, planning to expel 3 million Afghans in the long term.
Pakistan’s Minister of State for Interior Affairs, Talal Chaudry, recently announced that from May, the deportations would also affect those Afghans who are waiting in Pakistan to leave for Western countries.
