A plan to automatically deport failed Afghanistan asylum seekers from Australia on Thursday has been condemned by a coalition of organizations and prominent experts.
Australian Immigration Minister Chris Bowen last week announced that the government has reached an agreement with Afghan authorities through the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), to send failed asylum seekers directly back to the war-torn country.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Regional Representative Richard Towle was also a signatory on the deal.
However, the move has been strongly criticized, with leading Australia-based social-justice group, the Edmund Rice Center, saying there is no reason to believe returned Afghans will be safe.
"Over the past eight years, the Edmund Rice Center's research into Australia's deportations has found that returning asylum seekers to Afghanistan has produced direct and fatal consequences, " the organization said in a statement on Thursday.
The statement issued by the Edmund Rice Center was signed by 42 organizations including the Refugee Council of Australia and the Uniting Church in Australia. More than 14 prominent experts in the fields of social justice, religion and health have also added their names to the statement.
The statement's signatories reject the MoU and demands the Australian government "address its humanitarian obligations".
It said the consequences had been felt by the returned asylum seekers themselves and their immediate families. Many others have suffered threats and attacks, and today live with the well-founded fear of the very persecution they sought to escape.
The statement noted that many Afghan asylum seekers in Australia are members of the Hazara ethnic minority -- objects of discrimination and persecution in Afghanistan for decades. And there is no reason to believe that the ethnic and sectarian factors, fueling hostility towards them, have dissipated.
About 4300 Afghans have arrived in Australia claiming asylum since 2008, with half of all arrivals by boat heralding from the troubled country.