Artemis Akbary's speech in the European Parliament

Artemis Akbary, Afghan LGBT rights activist, in the European Parliament:

“According to our research Turkish authorities are discriminating #LGBTQIA_asylum_seekers deliberately. Tens of LGBTI refugees told us that they were humiliated and persecuted by Turkish authorities in the immigration office.Turkey's deportations of Afghan nationals dramatically increased from 2021 to 2022. 44,768 Afghan asylum seekers were deported by Turkey in the first eight months of 2022. This number represents a 150 percent increase over the number of Afghan nationals deported in the first eight months of 2021.”

The new Asylum and Migration Pact puts at its center increased cooperation with third countries to prevent people from reaching safety in the European Union, externalising border control at land and sea. With Denmark's law outsourcing asylum to third countries, this has taken a new dimension that we did not expect to happen in the EU. The hearing will also look at EU's strategy so far, whether EU’s silence over rights violations in Sudan, Libya, Egypt, Turkey and Morocco, EU's push to criminalise internal mobility and migration destabilising local economies as we have seen in Niger or conditioning aid as we have seen with Afghanistan.

“Turkey deliberately bypasses and violates refugee rights and international conventions. We cannot consider Turkey a safe third country. The EU’s externalization of border policy puts tremendous pressure on the suffering asylum seekers. This policy is cruel, wrong, and a clear violation of the rights of asylum seekers. In my opinion, this policy will cause human trafficking to expand and as a result, we will witness many deaths at the borders of Europe” Artemis Akbary said that.