The Federal Ministry of the Interior has issued a residence permit for a good 2,600 human rights activists, artists, scientists, journalists and other potentially endangered people from Afghanistan. This means that these people as well as their partners and children receive a residence permit for Germany, so they do not have to apply for asylum. A corresponding promise was given on Tuesday for all people whose names are on the "human rights list" of the Federal Foreign Office, said a spokesman for the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The only prerequisite is that there are no safety concerns in the individual case.
The majority of these people are currently not in Germany, said the spokeswoman for the Federal Foreign Office, Maria Adebahr, on Wednesday in Berlin. The government's crisis response center is working to help Germans, former local staff and other people in need of protection to leave Afghanistan and continue their journey to Germany - either by land via neighboring countries or with civil flights, as was most recently possible via Qatar.
After the Taliban came to power in August, evacuation flights by the Bundeswehr brought 4,587 people to Germany, including 3,849 Afghans and 403 German nationals. Former local personnel from the Bundeswehr and other German institutions were among those in need of protection. After the end of the airlift at the end of August, several hundred Afghans came to Germany by other means - for example via the Gulf emirate of Qatar. The full list of people who the Federal Foreign Office considers to be particularly in need of protection in addition to local staff was received by the Federal Ministry of the Interior last Friday.
Reporters Without Borders welcomed the interior ministry's decision, but criticized the delays in the past few days: “The responsible ministries have shifted responsibility to one another and thus blocked evacuation and admission procedures.” Nevertheless, it is gratifying, “that now apparently some of the organization The names of Afghan media workers sent to the Foreign Office are on an official list of authorized persons ”.
The number of those in need of protection now selected by the federal government is "far too low, given the many cases that we and other organizations had reported to the Federal Foreign Office," said the managing director of Pro Asyl, Günter Burkhardt.