Hannah Neumann, member of the European Parliament, condemned Iran’s mass deportations of Afghan migrants as a “deliberate state policy” and said the expulsions are illegal and that the Iranian government is “deporting the refugees into hell.”
Neumann, who is also vice chair of the European Parliament’s human rights subcommittee, said more than 700,000 Afghans have been expelled from Iran in 2025 — 600,000 since June alone — many of them “dumped in the dust of Islam Qala, barefoot, hungry, violated, and sent straight into Taliban territory.”
“This isn’t migration. It’s expulsion — by force, scale, and terror. No legal review. No access to asylum. No due process,” Neumann wrote in a post on X. “UN law calls it what it is: collective expulsion. That’s illegal. Iran is a signatory.”
Neumann accused the European Union of hypocrisy, noting that three years ago, EU officials said Afghan refugees could find safety in Iran and should seek regional protection. “Well, going spectacularly, isn’t it?” she wrote.
Many of the deportees, she said, had never lived in Afghanistan and were born in Iran. Some held valid visas, academic degrees, or traveled with children, yet were pulled from their homes, had their documents torn up, and were forcibly returned.
“This is not return. This is abandonment,” she wrote. “Single women are denied shelter for lack of a male guardian.”
She also rejected any suggestion that the current crisis is the result of post-conflict instability. “This is not post-war chaos,” she wrote. “It’s deliberate state policy.”
Neumann called on the European Commission to stop “border outsourcing” and take immediate action, including offering humanitarian visas, securing safe pathways out of Iran, and providing urgent funding to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration.
“Iran is not a safe host. Pakistan won’t hold the line. The Taliban won’t reintegrate anyone,” she wrote. “We owe Afghans more than thoughts and declarations.”
