Deportation policy questioned after suicide of Afghan asylum-seeker

Protestors expressed frustration that suicide-risk wasn't taken into consideration when deciding whether to deport a young Afghan asylum-seeker. © Keystone/ Valentin Flauraud

Some 500 people demonstrated in Geneva on Thursday to express anger and sadness after an 18-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker took his own life last week. He had just been informed that he was to be deported from Switzerland.

The demonstrators, many of them young asylum-seekers, shouted their anger in front of the headquarters of the Geneva social welfare office. “In Switzerland: injustice!” and “Refugees: solidarity!” the crowd chanted, according to reports from the Swiss News Agency Keystone-SDA.

The director of the social welfare office, Christophe Girod, spoke to the crowd, criticising administrative decisions taken at the federal level which didn’t consider personal situations. 

Several speakers at the protest criticised the decision by the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) to send the young Afghan back to Greece. The decision had been confirmed by the Federal Administrative Court. They said the authorities should have taken into account the suicidal risk that the young applicant presented.

Post-traumatic stress

On Wednesday the Geneva government expressed its frustration about the decision, which, it said, “endangers the life and health of the people who have been detained, when they are in a medically proven situation of psychological distress”.

According to various media reports, the young Afghan, named Alireza, arrived in Switzerland in spring 2021 after a difficult journey. He entered Europe via Greece, where he allegedly suffered abuse in a refugee camp. 

Upon arrival in Switzerland he stayed at the Foyer de l’Etoile in Geneva, which welcomes young unaccompanied minors and young adults. Doctors in Switzerland indicated that he suffered from post-traumatic stress.