Richard Bennett, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, has said that Swiss authorities have assured him that deportations of migrants based on ethnicity have never been under consideration.
In a post on the social media platform X, Bennett stressed the importance of the issue, warning that equating Pashtun identity with support for the Taliban or assuming safety under Taliban rule is “false, discriminatory, and harmful.”
His remarks come in response to a report by the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, which claimed that following a series of violent incidents involving Afghan nationals in Germany last year, Switzerland’s migration office had proposed a controversial plan to deport asylum seekers of Pashtun ethnicity to Afghanistan.
Reacting to the report, the Swiss State Secretariat for Migration told Afghanistan International that it does not make distinctions based on ethnicity when assessing deportation cases. The office confirmed that deportation based on ethnic background has never been part of its policy.
The issue has sparked renewed concern among rights advocates and refugee communities, who warn against the dangers of ethnic profiling in European migration policy.
