Hazara man deported to Afghanistan
Refugee advocates say an Afghan asylum seeker should not have been deported from Perth because he was at risk of persecution on return to his home province.
Members of the Refugee Rights Action Network handed out leaflets to passengers and staff as they boarded the flight at Perth International Airport on Tuesday night, asking them to insist the 20-year-old man be removed from the plane before take-off.
They urged passengers to protest by refusing to buckle their seatbelts, preventing the plane from taking off.
The man from Ghazni Province, who is a Shia Muslim, arrived in Australia in May 2012 by boat.
He claimed in his application to the Refugee Review Tribunal that he had been personally targeted by the Taliban.
The man said he got caught up in a convoy of trucks loaded with US tanks and was fired upon while he was delivering goods for shopkeepers between Jaghori and Herat in early 2011.
He said it happened again weeks later when he was on the same route and among a convoy transporting fuel for the government, with bullets this time striking his vehicle.
He submitted that he feared he would be killed if he continued to work as a driver, saying the Taliban would suspect him of delivering goods for foreign forces because he had already been involved in two targeted attacks on truck convoys.
The Tribunal said it did not accept there was a real risk that "the death penalty will be carried out, or that he will be arbitrarily deprived of his life, or subjected to torture, cruel or inhuman treatment or punishment, or degrading treatment or punishment if he returns to Kabul".
The man is liable to pay the Commonwealth the costs of his removal from Australia, which total $25,531, largely comprising of travel costs for officials escorting him.
