Germany Accused of Paying Poor Countries to Accept Rejected Asylum Seekers

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(Newswire.net — January 31, 2016) — Certain embassies of African countries in Berlin have received money to accept third world asylum seekers that have been rejected by the wealthier EU member Germany, Russia Today cited the German refugee rights organization report.

 Germany has been giving “financial incentives” to the embassies of certain African countries, according to the report, which implies money is offered to an embassy for accepting asylum seekers, regardless of their actual country of origin.

“These agreements commit the African countries to readmitting their own citizens who have had asylum turned down by Germany, but it also allows them to readmit rejected asylum seekers from other countries, who travelled through these transit states,” said Max Pichl, a member of Pro Azyl, a German refugee rights organization.

Pichl stated that his organization has obtained the data that confirms German authorities are paying not all, but some African embassies, which leads to the deportation of migrants to said African country of whose embassy received the payments.

“It is difficult to say how many people it affects,” Pichl told local media, RT reported.  “There is a very long list of countries with whom Germany has such agreements,” he added.

German weekly Der Freitag reported last week that rejected refugees whose country of origin cannot be determined are sent to meet with representatives of countries that can potentially ‘import’ them.

According to the German weekly Der Freitag, in 2014, German federal authorities ordered 720 “stateless” asylum seekers to attend 50 such meetings with representatives from 18 different African countries.

In addition to that, the regional authorities organized “an indefinite number of such meetings” the weekly reported.