Merkel to press Tunisia PM on migrant repatriations
BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel is expected to press Tunisia’s Prime Minister Youssef Chahed to speed up the return of rejected asylum seekers when he visits Berlin yesterday.
The issue has become more urgent for Germany since the deadly jihadist attack on a Berlin Christmas market last December, blamed on Anis Amri, a Tunisian who should have been sent back months before.
After the attack which claimed 12 lives, it emerged that Amri’s asylum application had been rejected half a year earlier, but that he could not be expelled because of Tunisian bureaucratic delays.
Merkel plans to discuss with Chahed how to “work more quickly on this, especially in cases involving dangerous militants”, she said in her weekly podcast message, adding that Tunis had signalled “a very positive” stance on the issue.
Germany has taken in over one million migrants and refugees since 2015, an inf lux that has heaped pressure on Merkel as she faces the rise of the antiimmigration AfD party ahead of September elections.
While most refugees from wartorn Syria have qualified for temporary safe haven, applicants from Tunisia as well as Algeria and Morocco general ly have not, because their countries are considered stable.
Last year the success rates for asylum requests was 3.5 per cent for Moroccans, 2.7 per cent for Algerians and just 0.8 per cent for Tunisians.
Merkel stressed that she wants Germany to list the three as “safe countries of origin”, raising the bar for asylum requests further — but the proposal has been held up in the upper house of parliament in Berlin over human rights concerns.
Amnesty International this week alleged that a rise in “brutal tactics” by Tunisian security forces, including torture and arbitrary arrests, are threatening pro- democracy reforms in the country.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere last year visited all three Maghreb countries to urge better cooperation on repatriations.
The question had already became a hot-button issue after New Year’s Eve 2015-16, when mobs of North African men sexually assaulted and robbed hundreds of women in the western city of Cologne, sparking public outrage. — AFP