Swedish media and the NGO Human Rights Watch claimed that an Afghan asylum seeker deported from Sweden had been a victim of a terror attack in Kabul until evidence later showed he wasn’t among the victims.
The Afghan capital of Kabul has been the scene of terror this month with an estimated 180 people becoming victims of radical Islamist attacks. The NGO Human Rights Watch claimed that among them was a young man recently deported from Sweden, Die Welt reports.
The largest attack came on May 31st when a bomb set off near the German Embassy killed 150 people. At the funeral of one of the victims more suicide bombers attacked, killing seven people and according to Human Rights Watch, the recently deported Afghan national was among them.
The NGO got their information from the website Blankspot who claimed that the 17-year-old had been killed at the funeral. Blankspot is a Swedish left-wing site that has written a number of articles against the deportation of asylum seekers from Sweden to Afghanistan.
The story was picked up by many in Swedish media including broadcaster Sveriges Radio who later deleted the article when it turned out the Afghan national was not among those killed.
Fejknyheten om utvisade afghanen tas upp av propagandacentralen SR.Pinsamt nog avpubliceras den när visar sig falsk https://t.co/OR5BJVTO5p pic.twitter.com/Mg9JDZjv5d
— Egor Putilov (@EgorPutilov) June 14, 2017
Human Rights Watch also retracted their claim replacing their initial article entitled, “Afghan Teenager, Deported from Sweden, Killed in Kabul,” with a brief statement. “HRW has removed the dispatch entitled “Afghan Teenager, Deported from Sweden, Killed in Kabul” because there is now conflicting information as to whether this deportee was killed,” they wrote.
Many, including Human Rights Watch, used the story to push for the end of deportations of failed asylum seekers to Afghanistan. In their original article, the NGO wrote, “The idea that Kabul is safe for Afghans has real effects … Kabul is not safe.”
Since the bombings near the German embassy, Germany has temporarily halted deportations to Afghanistan. When the German government announced its plans to go ahead with deportations left-wing pro-migrant activists flooded Frankfurt airport to protest.
In addition to the protests, many left-wing regional governments in Germany have also said they will not cooperate with the Federal government’s deportation plans. The governments of Schleswig-Holstein, Berlin, Bremen, Lower Saxony, and Rhineland-Palatinate have all said they won’t help deport any Afghan nationals.
In the German capital of Berlin the vast majority, some 80 percent, of migrants who have been deported have been from the Balkan states and Eastern Europe rather than North Africa or Central Asia. Many of them have left voluntarily after being given money by the government.
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