Vice World News: They Escaped Taliban Bullets, but Not French Tear Gas

Aug. 20, 2021

PARIS – When Hikmatullah arrived in France last month after escaping the Taliban, he thought his days on the run were over.

What he didn’t anticipate was having to flee again, this time from French police who have been chasing out Afghan asylum seekers in Paris with tear gas nearly every night in August, according to local migrant aid groups.

“One of the officers shouted in English, ‘Go back to your fucking country,’” the 22-year-old, who asked to be identified by his first name only, told VICE World News in the northeast edge of Paris, where he, his teenage brother and two dozen other Afghan refugees were settling in for the night.

“I will never forget that,” he said, his voice shaking in anger. “I am shocked. Before I thought France was good to refugees. But I see it’s very different.”

While terrified Afghans are desperately trying to flee the Taliban via Kabul’s airport, those who’ve already made the journey into Europe face a different kind of persecution altogether, one that’s cloaked in bitter disappointment.

Calling France’s treatment of Afghan and other asylum seekers “deplorable,” the co-founder of migrant aid group Utopia56 Yann Manzi said that refugees are deliberately chased out from Paris city centre in a strategy aimed at making them “invisible” and leading the public to believe that the issue has been resolved.

More at https://www.vice.com/en/article/88n77x/they-escaped-taliban-bullets-but-not-french-tear-gas