After the deportation of an Afghan man from the UK was halted when a Turkish pilot refused to fly with him on board, open borders campaigners in Britain have vowed to target airlines and passengers in their quest to block migrant removals.
Afghan Samim Bigzad — whose initial asylum claim was rejected in March 2016, with subsequent appeals also refused — was due to be returned to his homeland on Saturday on a Turkish Airlines flight via Istanbul.
But the pilot refused to fly the 22-year-old failed asylum seeker, who became hysterical upon boarding the flight, and was taken back into detention as a result of campaigners’ actions to block the deportation attempt.
Activists from “Kent Anti-Racism Network” lobbied the airline, and travelled to Heathrow Airport where they told passengers due to board the same flight that Bigzad faces death in Afghanistan, urging them to raise concerns over his case with Turkish Airlines crew members.
Guidance on how to lobby airlines and passengers in order to prevent flights being used to deport migrants with no right to stay in Britain has been released by open borders campaign groups such as Right to Remain, whose coordinator Lisa Matthews called stopping deportations a “life-saving measure” that buys time for people to launch legal challenges.
Kent Anti-Racism Network chairman Bridget Chapman, who organised the campaigners’ trip to Heathrow at the weekend, was optimistic about Bigzad’s prospects for being granted asylum at future appeals, asserting that the government made the wrong call in deciding to deport the Afghan — who broke into Britain after a stint living in the Calais ‘Jungle’ camp.
“Afghanistan is not a safe place for anyone to be sent back to,” she said on BBC South East Today, and dismissed the public broadcaster’s suggestion that Britain “can’t take in everybody in the world” as a refugee.
“In all seriousness, you don’t draw the line,” stated Chapman when pressed on migration limits, adding: “I’m not drawing a line anywhere. We’ve made a mess in Afghanistan and we need to help pick up the pieces.”
This month, Breitbart London reported on how refugees from Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq have been returning from neighbouring regions to their homelands in huge numbers, as a result of improvements in the security and economic situations there, whilst Western nations continue to welcome large numbers of Middle Eastern asylum seekers.
In March, the UN-affiliated International Organization for Migration (IOM) announced the launch of a four-year project, funded by the European Commission, to help the reintegration of Afghan refugees returning to their homeland.
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