Immigration Minister Scott Morrison plans to deport a Hazara asylum seeker from Villawood detention centre to Afghanistan, this Tuesday night 4 February. This would be the first forced deportation to Afghanistan. 

The 65 year-old Hazara is scheduled to be returned to Kabul even though he has not lived in Afghanistan since 1986 and his wife and 10 children are living in Quetta in Pakistan.

The Refugee Review Tribunal accepted that ‘it will not be safe’ for him to live in his home province of Khas Uruzgan, but that he can relocate and live in Kabul. But he has had no connection with Afghanistan for 37 years. The man has no family; no connections; no money and no possibility of surviving in Kabul.

Kabul is not safe. The security situation has deteriorated badly since the RRT decision in 2012. Rocket attacks hit Kabul last December and deadly Taliban bombings rocked Kabul in January this year. A Shia mosque was targeted in September 2013.

When the Labor government signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Afghan government in 2011 signalling its agreement to facilitate forced deportations, there was widespread opposition, with over 40 organisations signing a statement opposing it organised by the Edmund Rice Centre. The agreement unravelled, with the Afghan government refusing to issue travel documents for forced deportees since it was not safe to return them.

Now the Liberal goverment is trying it again. If he suceeds this week many other Afghan deportations may follow.