Rights groups slam Sweden for proposing to expel 80,000 refugees

Sweden has come under heavy criticism from rights groups days after the Swedish interior minister Anders Ygemen revealed that as many as 80,000 failed asylum-seekers face expulsion from the Scandinavian country.

Read also: 80,000 migrants face expulsion from Sweden

Ygemen also informed that in order to make the repatriation smooth, a chartered aircraft would be provided to deport expelled migrants over several years.
“We are talking about 60,000 people but the number could climb to 80,000,” Swedish media quoted him as saying.
The move is viewed as the latest in a string of similar measures among European countries with an estimated 45 percent of Sweden’s more than 160,000 asylum applicants in 2015 projected to have been denied asylum.

Senior researcher and advocate at the Malmo-based Centre for Refugee Solidarity, Alia al-Ghussain, said the number
“is quite shocking because they have not processed all of the applications and cannot be sure they will deport that many people”.

Sweden is the latest European country to witness heightened tension over the influx of migrants and the potential threat they pose especially following the arrest of a 15-year-old asylum seeker in Molndal, near Gothenburg, after he attacked and stabbed a 22-year-old Swedish asylum centre employee to death.

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