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IMMIGRATION

Anger brews at deportation of Vietnamese activist from Nuremberg

Germany's deportation of a Vietnamese author and human rights activist back to his communist-ruled homeland sparked protests on Thursday.

Anger brews at deportation of Vietnamese activist from Nuremberg
The foreigners' office in Nuremberg. Photo: DPA

Nguyen Quang Hong Nhan, 65, and his wife were expelled last week by
immigration authorities in the Bavarian city of Nuremberg.

The deportation took place despite the fact Vietnam considers Nhan a “state enemy” and sentenced him to 20 years' jail.

Ralf Nestmeyer, Germany vice president of the PEN writers association, said he was “appalled by the deportation”, in an open letter to Bavaria's state interior minister Joachim Herrmann and the immigration department.

“How can you deport an author whose livelihood is the freedom of the word
to a land known for repression and censorship?” Nestmeyer wrote.

The left-leaning Greens party also protested the March 26th deportation,
labelling it “absolutely cruel and inhumane” and a “complete failure of
Bavarian asylum policy.”

SEE ALSO: Asylum granted legally in over 99 percent of cases, review finds

Nhan was in 1979 sentenced in Vietnam to 20 years in prison for “propaganda against the socialist state” and served most of the term.

Germany's taz newspaper, which first reported on the deportation case, said Nhan had authored over 20 books and been repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature and other awards.

He was only able to leave in 2015 thanks to the musical talents of his
daughter, now aged 19, whom the parents accompanied to European piano
competitions.

But last week, Bavarian authorities rejected his application for political
asylum.

Police went to their refuge accommodation centre and placed the couple on a Vietnam-bound aircraft despite the fact they also have a pending request for safe haven in Canada.

After his return to Hanoi, the author, who requires medication since suffering a stroke, was interrogated by police but then released, his lawyer
Manfred Hörner told the Süddeutsche Zeitung daily.

The couple's daughter, Nguyen Quang Hong An, a music student in Nuremberg, stayed behind, having apparently only evaded deportation because she did not have a valid Vietnamese passport.

“The fact that her family was torn apart and her parents were deported was
a heavy blow for her,” Hörner told the Stuttgarter Nachrichten daily.

Greens party lawmaker Margarete Bause called on the German foreign ministry to take up the case of the “massively vulnerable” daughter, and to “take steps for her protection”.

The music school's principal Christoph Adt told taz that a deportation of
Hong An would be “absolutely unacceptable” and that he and church authorities had launched an urgent appeal for her to be allowed to stay in Germany.

SEE ALSO: Five things to know about the asylum deal struck by Merkel and Seehofer

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CRIME

Germany mulls expulsions to Afghanistan after knife attack

Germany said Tuesday it was considering allowing deportations to Afghanistan, after an asylum seeker from the country injured five and killed a police officer in a knife attack.

Germany mulls expulsions to Afghanistan after knife attack

Officials had been carrying out an “intensive review for several months… to allow the deportation of serious criminals and dangerous individuals to Afghanistan”, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told journalists.

“It is clear to me that people who pose a potential threat to Germany’s security must be deported quickly,” Faeser said.

“That is why we are doing everything possible to find ways to deport criminals and dangerous people to both Syria and Afghanistan,” she said.

Deportations to Afghanistan from Germany have been completely stopped since the Taliban retook power in 2021.

But a debate over resuming expulsions has resurged after a 25-year-old Afghan was accused of attacking people with a knife at an anti-Islam rally in the western city of Mannheim on Friday.

A police officer, 29, died on Sunday after being repeatedly stabbed as he tried to intervene in the attack.

Five people taking part in a rally organised by Pax Europa, a campaign group against radical Islam, were also wounded.

Friday’s brutal attack has inflamed a public debate over immigration in the run up to European elections and prompted calls to expand efforts to expel criminals.

READ ALSO: Tensions high in Mannheim after knife attack claims life of policeman

The suspect, named in the media as Sulaiman Ataee, came to Germany as a refugee in March 2013, according to reports.

Ataee, who arrived in the country with his brother at the age of only 14, was initially refused asylum but was not deported because of his age, according to German daily Bild.

Ataee subsequently went to school in Germany, and married a German woman of Turkish origin in 2019, with whom he has two children, according to the Spiegel weekly.

Per the reports, Ataee was not seen by authorities as a risk and did not appear to neighbours at his home in Heppenheim as an extremist.

Anti-terrorism prosecutors on Monday took over the investigation into the incident, as they looked to establish a motive.

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