Tell Sweden: Stop the NATO deportation of refugees and asylum-seekers to Turkey!
(Lund, Sweden, 12.26.2022) In its bid to join NATO, Sweden has begun deporting Kurdish asylum-seekers to Turkey, where they face imprisonment and torture. The Swedish Observatory for Human Rights Information calls on Sweden to stop the deportations now!
Sweden’s application to join NATO is pushing Swedish politics even further in a wrong direction. The consequences are already extremely clear:
Deportations of Kurds to Turkey, with police on standby at the airport.
The Swedish army’s commander-in-chief Micael Bydén says yes to nuclear weapons and wants to send troops to the Baltic States.
Two Kurds were deported from Sweden to Turkey. They were greeted by a cheering squad in the official Turkish media. This comes directly after the new right-wing Swedish foreign minister, Tobias Billström, visited Erdoğan, where he stressed that NATO membership is of paramount importance.
Mahmut Tat was sentenced to six years in prison in Turkey for “association with the PKK” before he fled to Sweden. But after five years of waiting for a decision from the Migration Agency, he was refused asylum in 2020 and then his appeal was rejected in 2021. He was arrested by Swedish police, held in custody (refugee prison) and deported along with another man in a specially chartered plane. Turkish police were waiting at Ankara airport.
The extradition follows an extended pressure campaign by Turkey and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg for Finland and Sweden to abandon their human rights commitments to unblock their bid to join NATO. Turkey has remained the only NATO member opposed to Finland and Sweden’s accession, accusing the Nordic states of harboring “terrorists” and demanding the extradition of 33 Kurdish activists to Turkey, where they are likely to face serious human rights violations.
“As Turkey’s war on Kurdish communities in Syria and Iraq intensifies, NATO’s bid to expand further north has given it a blanket of impunity — one that will only broaden as Sweden and Finland give in to its demands.”
- Ned El-Attar, Executive Director, sohri
More worrying, the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet has published a list of a total of 45 people from Sweden and Finland that Turkey demands to be handed over. One of those on the list is the Swedish citizen Hamza Yalcin, a socialist writer and activist from Turkey. Hamza Yalcin, is a Swedish citizen since 15 years and a resident of Halmstad. The Turkish government have persecuted him since he began his involvement in the Turkish leftist movement over 40 years ago.
“I have been shot at, imprisoned and tortured. Those in power hate me because I have continued my political activities on the side of the working class and criticized the government in Turkey. But I have a hard time understanding why they are chasing me. I work peacefully and openly. My work does not pose any physical threat to anyone. Besides, I have no power or influence, and the Turkish leftist movement is weak.” - Hamza Yalcin said in an interview.
After seven years in Sweden, Mahmut Tat was arrested and deported to Erdogan's Turkey, where a prison sentence of 7 years awaits him for alleged collusion with the Kurdish PKK. The Swedish government is doing everything to get into NATO and turns a blind eye to the fact that their deportation decision is entirely based on the mock trial of Mahmut Tat in Turkey.
It took more than five years before asylum seeker Mahmut Tat received a decision from the Swedish Migration Agency just over a year ago. It was a rejection of the application for a residence permit, based on the verdict in the trial in Turkey. Moreover, Mahmut Tat, was diagnosed with cancer during his time in Sweden, he appealed to the Swedish Migration Agency to reconsider the decision and made it clear that he did not intend to go back.
Mahmut Tat has since then continued to work at a pizzeria in Gothenburg. Until three weeks ago, when the police waited for him when he came from work and drove him first to the station in Hjällbo and then to the detention center in Mölndal.
The Swedish Observatory for Human Rights Information believes that Sweden is a country that can contribute to peace in the world. An effective non-aligned policy is what is needed right now. NATO pursues a policy of war and a world war threatens us all. The non-aligned policy can and must be defended by Swedish people and Human rights organisations.
